by Tomiaki Tamura

Soleri Archives was established in mid-1990's in an effort to preserve in one location the Soleri original drawings, sketchbooks and manuscripts.  Eventually consolidated at Arcosanti and stored in a climate-controlled vault, these materials are currently being documented and catalogued.   Our present challenge is to establish a conservation program for the paper archives, particularly those damaged because of delicate materials and previous poor storage condition. In 2005 a major Soleri retrospective exhibition was held at Instituto Nazionale per la Grafica in Rome, there over 100 original drawings were restored by its conservation staff. As we progress in our Archival tasks, we hope to see Soleri's works available to the public in many more venues and formats.

Shifting through thousands of archival materials, one wonders at Soleri's prolific output and what his legacy could be to this ever-perplexing world.

Since his youth, Soleri has followed a religion of a less divine sort, taking the original meaning of "religio" that is "to bind". He began binding into volumes his favorite stories of Tarzan. Then he went on to bind (and package) his own drawings and journals. What prompted Soleri to do this integral act of binding? Was it his keen sense of order necessitated by his aesthetics, or was it his attempt to make sense out of a world full of fragmented realities?

Soleri has produced many sketchbooks in various formats. The most impressive are in ten volumes started in 1958 and continuing to this day; each consists of about 400 pages, about 14" x 17" (35cm x 45cm) in size,  and is bound between sculpted cast aluminum plates.  Each page of these 10 bound volumes shows fragments  from the stream of his creative consciousness. The contents of the sketchbooks were often sources of further development and expansion expressed on different canvases. One such format is Soleri's trademark open-ended scroll, typically 3 to 4 feet (90 to 120 cm) in width and 30 to 180 feet (10 to 60 m) in length, in which he explored the variations of ideas originated in the sketchbooks.

Soleri's drawings can be seen as simulation of suggested reality
suspended in his chosen medium. They are waiting to be explored by
the imagination of observers and collaborators interacting with
Soleri's creative domain.

Arcosanti, Soleri's urban alternative prototype under construction in
Arizona, is an attempt to materialize his idea through the help of a
thousand minds.  If the act of living includes the pioneering of
reality through imagination and sweat, Soleri has certainly given us
more than enough food for thought in the examples he has left on
paper and in the desert wind.