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PAOLO SOLERI: WHAT IF?, COLLECTED WRITINGS 1986-2000

Editor's Note
BY KATHLEEN RYAN

This collection covers a lot of ground. As the most comprehensive and most recent presentation of Soleri's writings, it is meant to be both an introduction-reference guide to Soleri's thinking, and a continuation of his over-thirty-year publication history, which began with Arcology: The City in the Image of Man (1969) and left off with Technology and Cosmogenesis (1985). The ensemble is comprised of five diagrams, four major essays, thirty-five shorter pieces, and selected notebook entries, which have been transformed into colored subtext, "hoppers," and "bubble statements."

Book One emphasizes Soleri's physical model of reality. Two major essays anchor the section: "Space as Reality, a Hypothesis" and "The Lean Hypothesis and the Lean Alternative." In Book Two, the major essays "Esthequity: A Transecological Project" and "Religion" present his metaphysical hypotheses.

The reader is advised to pay special attention to the four diagrams presented at the beginning of the volume. In addition to introducing the work's major hypotheses and themes, the diagrams guide the reader through the color-coding scheme of its subtext annotations. Consulting the glossary early on is also a good idea.

Each Book contains two major themes-hypotheses in essay form, which, in turn, are each followed by variations. For example, the first major theme-essay of Book Two is "Esthequity," an eschatological hypothesis based on the pursuit of esthetics and equity. "Esthequity" is succeeded by several shorter pieces, such as "Venice Biennale: Toward the World Governing the Environment," and "Hyper Building." These short-piece variations further Soleri's notion of Esthequity, and, at the same time, present concrete applications of the theory.

The short-piece variations are flanked by color-coded subtext: selected notebook entries that reinforce, revisit, and occasionally refute the topics under discussion. This theme-variation- reinforcement pattern is then repeated with a complementary hypothesis.

The "Hoppers" section follows. The hoppers consist of additional selections from Soleri's notebooks, this time categorized into six subject headings: Animism, Better Kind of Wrongness, The Feminine, Frugality, Howness, and MCD. The subject headings are the same in both Books, but the notes for each reflect the particular Book's themes. For example, the hopper material gathered under the heading of "The Feminine" in Book One tends toward the architectural. Here we see Soleri comparing the virtues of his chosen form, the womblike apse, to the sterility and vulnerability of the lingam-skyscraper. The material for The Feminine hopper in Book Two, on the other hand, emphasizes Soleri's thoughts on The Feminine's genetic and cultural realities, contributions, and potentials.

The Hopper section also offers an opportunity to see some of the earlier annotations, presented as color-coded subtext, in their entirety.

The final section in each Book is the "Bubbles" section, composed of the bubble diagram and bubble statements that further reinforce and solidify the themes of the particular volume. A mere glance at the bubble diagram with its expanding bubbles within bubbles -- from political correctness to historical fitness to evolutionary coherence to cosmic relevance -- reveals the section's intent as the ultimate in perspective enhancers. Upon reaching this section, the reader will appreciate the significance of the following statements:

The bubbles, expedient as they are, come in useful on a daily basis for the balancing act. Where am I within the sphere of reality, and what can my presence be able to nudge? Within the sphere, in these tumultuous times, and times are perennially tumultuous, how can I be of some constructive relevance? -- Soleri

He who is great recognizes himself in all and thus in the whole; he does not live, like others, only in the microcosm, but still more in the macrocosm. For him it is not strange; he feels that it concerns him, and he tries to grasp it, in order to present it, or explain it, or act on it in practice. On account of this extension of his sphere, he is great. -- Schopenhauer

With much gratitude and reverence to the great mind behind all this, I present this collection, one of the many fruits of his lifetime's doing and thinking.

-Kathleen Ryan Cosanti Foundation

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