Camp Verde, Az to Flagstaff, Az

A little north of Phoenix (south of Camp Verde) at Cordes Juntion is Arcosanti, a 1970's experiment in architectural town planning by Paolo Soleri, an award-winning architect who studied under the tutelage of Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West in Arizona.

We spent an hour on a tour of Arcosanti. One of the first domes to be constructed using the two techniques of poured casting and precast concrete, the Ceramics Apse is for slip casting of bells and chimes to support the project. It is east-facing to make the best use of the sun - and shade when it is at its highest point - and can also be re-used as a performance space.

Arcosanti is designed 'in the round' and many aspects have been designed on pure artistic merit. For instance, when it rains, the water is collected by the flat roof and channeled through a visual nook, creating a waterfall effect into the storage area below.

The Arcosanti stage area. Performances of many kinds had taken place here - including classical, jazz and 'light shows' (we guessed they were burned-out hippies before we arrived), and the next performance to take place was Taiko drumming. In the background you can see some retail space (still to be let - but our tour guide didn't think it would be by McDonalds or Starbucks) which will form the shopping area of the finished project (which seems to be never).

In the meantime, income for the project is generated by the rentable guest accommodation (at reasonable prices), with the sky suite (penthouse) just visible at the top of the photo.

The swimming pool, which overlooks the 12 greenhouse guest rooms and the general surrounding area.

In front of the main amphitheater (North and South Vaults), this photo shows the recurring circle motif, on a bench next to the waterfall shown above, looking through to the other side of the main landscaped area. This space is planted with Italian cypress and olive trees (which, of course, are harvested each year and sold to support the project).

The circle motif again - this time in the main window of the cafe/atrium. Above is the mezzanine floor where the shop is located. It was here that we realised that Paolo's dream has become diluted somewhat - the tour was cut short when some meeting attendees told our guide that they 'needed to remain focused' - so we couldn't see the foundry. We suspected they should have focused on communicating this earlier - and therein lies the biggest problem with hippy commune non-hierarchical structures - they are rife with politics and bias, which prevents true success.

The view from the mezzanine floor/shop area, where they sell the ceramic wind chimes. At this point Morag and I started to chat about what we would do to deal to the place - first thing would be: sort out the cleaners. Why are hippys always so dirty? Next, repair the broken windows and pave the metal road to get there. Also, where does it say that dreams need to suffer from lack of business acumen? We agreed they needed a general manager to provide additional revenue streams, some sort of promotions manager or PR guru to generate interest, a new set of student architects to bring the spacey 70's dream into the new millenium, and... Ok, we'll stop there - we have our own dreams to make real, thank you very much!

This is the current model of the final Arcosanti complex - the part built already is in dark grey.

After the insouciant Arcosanti experience, we travelled off to the the incorrectly-named Montezuma Castle (Montezuma never made it this far north) this is a diorama of the 900-year-old five floor cliff cave pueblo (stone house) complex, with the front walls removed so you can see what would have taken place inside.

This is the Montezuma Castle exterior as it looks today. It was interesting to compare a farming culture who lived in an artificial cliff dwelling for 400 years with the earlier 30-year-old architectural curiosity of Arcosanti. The native Sinagua people did not even have access to the wheel, and yet were able to live in harmony with nature for many, many generations. However, the mystery is that about 600 years ago, presumably after a large fire destroyed most of Castle A, they disappeared completely (local native american legends tell of these visitors who integrated themselves into other tribes).

Montezuma Castle A, where a much larger complex of 45-50 rooms was burnt and evacuated in the early 1300s. In each partially reconstructed room, an extremely heavy stone metate (stone grinder, probably passed from one generation to the next) marked the date when a native civilisation (without access to carts or oxen) became dispossessed of their cultural base, and were forced to find new homes elsewhere. A sobering thought for those of us who are thinking about starting a new society...