UCLA

Over the course of the 1960s and 1970s, the architect Paolo Soleri envisioned and built the utopian architectural project Arcosanti. Despite its notoriety, Arcosanti’s relationship to the discourses and discipline of architecture has been little understood. Responding to the research question of how Soleri constructed his utopia, this thesis argues that a dialectic of inside and outside formed the conditions of its realization. Each chapter of the thesis raises a relationship between inside and outside that Soleri navigated. The first chapter investigates his participation in museum exhibitions. The second explores his production of ceramics. The third examines his construction of his own designs with the Institute for American Indian Arts Amphitheater. The final chapter analyzes Arcosanti as a camp.