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Collected Aquatic Plants
For Creating a Living Machine : Photo : Wes Ozier |
“The Premise set
by life –a wet phenomenon- is thus confronted by the
arid envelope. Water becomes a critical resource. Since water
is used but not consumed, we plan to use the same water in
three successive steps: domestically, aesthetically, and agriculturally.”
-Paolo Soleri,
“Arcosanti: An Urban Laboratory?”
How an Arcology would deal with its sewage
and other waste-water is an important issue.
To explore answers to this question the Cosanti Foundation
is prototyping concepts learned from Ocean
Arks International.
In nature there is no ‘waste’ from organisms,
only nutrients to be used for another organism. Led
by research and experimentation by John Todd, author
of “Eco-Cities”, Ocean Arks International
teaches how to construct “Applied Eco-Systems”,
which are not as much a technology as a technique on
how use natural, biological, process’ to treat
sewage and waste-water.
 In
using this technique one balances various flora and
fauna in a container,
the plants and animals then do what nature has done
for millennia, use biological process to turn ‘waste’ from
one organism into nutrients for another.
Though not yet extensive, Arcosanti has begun some
experiments on how to integrate these systems into the
current water system, landscaping and site aesthetics.
The larger concept involves taking the gray water effluent
from the individual apartments spaces into the gardens
that surround them, then the black water effluent would
go to the Oxidation Pond where it would be treated.
Prescott
Workshop
Arcosanti
Workshop
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