Arcosanti

The story

In 1970, Italian architect Paolo Soleri—a former apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright—drove 70 miles north of Phoenix into the high desert basalt mesa near Cordes Junction and started pouring concrete directly into the earth. Soleri called his grand experiment 'arcology,' a hyper-dense fusion of architecture and ecology designed to wipe out suburban sprawl. His construction method was as odd as the premise: workers carved deep molds directly into the desert silt, poured reinforced concrete over the mounds, and dug out the dirt underneath once the shell cured, leaving behind massive, scoop-shaped apses built directly out of the ground.

Over fifty years later, Arcosanti is less than five percent complete. The high-density retro-futurist city meant to house 5,000 people topped out at a resident count hovering between 50 and 150 people. What remains is a quiet, half-built concrete monument stuck between a 1970s sci-fi commune and an active artisanal workshop. The entire site keeps its lights on partly through an open-air foundry, where residents pour molten bronze into silt molds to produce Soleri's famous wind bells for tourists.