Customer Reviews

Arcology: The City in the Image of Man

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I saw this book in a store in the late seventies and bought it for myself. As a teenaged reader, I was very impressed with the art, and inspired by the text (nonsensical though some of it seemed). Clearly utopian and attractive, this book will inspire many a young artist or city planner. The fact that it is so far afield of the mainstream is only a plus: it will challenge and stimulate critical thinkers.

Note: with the high cost of building an arcology, and the need for (rather unamerican) centralized control, why haven't one of the arab states tried building one? UAE is certainly spending arcology-scale sums on the construction of the Burj Dubai complex...

The first edition of this book is huge - several feet wide when opened, and the images are all the more impressive in that format. Given the price for this reduced size edition, it might be worth your while to search for a used copy of the big edition. Size is the only reason I gave the book less than a 5 star review.
I purchased the book when I worked for Solari in 73, and revisited the book recently when my son and I had a discussion about low environmental impact lifestyles in urban settings. It was a joy to rediscover, and I was struck how far its influence has spread during the intervening years, particularly in the field of science fiction. In many ways the book itself is a work of fiction, with designs that are outrageous in scale, and impractical to construct, at least in the here and now. That is one reason I love the earlier edition so much - the book's outrageous scale matched the scale of the concept itself.
In retrospect, I think the vision promoted in the book is even more attractive now than it was in the early 1970s. We are beginning to see mega-scale construction projects, and the one thing they so obviously lack is Solari's humanity and commitment to the individual's place in such massive structures.