Congratulations to the September 2. workshop participants upon their graduation:
[top from left]
Jeffrey Michaels, Elisabetta Quaglino, Daniela Cardace and Amber Clatt.
[front from left]
Eric Cote, Cameron Wilson and William Holman.
Elisabetta, Daniela, Amber, Cameron and William continue an internship in construction. Jeffrey Michaels stays on in the graphics department.

Interior construction proceeds on a first floor apartment of Unit 10 in the East Crescent.
To continue the report from 9/10/07, we start with a plan of the apartment.
The main room is located in the Unit 10 light scoop with windows facing east and south. Note the curved wall right next to a recessed back entrance/exit.
The main door can be entered from a, yet to be tiled, porch area. Upon entering an open kitchen area is on your right and a bathroom with shower right next to the kitchen.

The back door leads to a staircase on the east side of the S.O.D. office unit.

Construction crew Melissa Soluski installs insulation material prior to dry wall.
This report continues on 10/3/07 with drywall installation.

This continues the 9/21/07 report of construction on the new Visitors Center entrance path.
A small area is poured right next to the delivery slab and a short-cut stairway made with large rocks is carefully secured the rocks with concrete.
Crew working on this slab are planning intern Francesca La Malva and workshop participants Eric Cote and William Holman.

The form is complete for a large slab above the new stairway construction. The concrete mixture for this slab contains coarse gravel. A few hours after the concrete was poured, the crew washed the surface with a good brush. This exposes some of the gravel and makes this entrance slab safer to walk.

Part of the crew works on the new and much wider staircase.
[from upper left] Construction team, Elisabetta Quaglino, Cameron Wilson, Daniela Cardace, William Holman and Eric Cote, custom cut and install the side forms for the new stairs.
Construction team chief David Tollas and landscaping coordinator Ron Chandler put the finishing touch on the first stair.

Construction continues at the new Visitors Center entrance. We last reported on this area on 9/14/07.
Construction staff David Tollas teaches a crew of interns and workshop participants.
[from upper left] The old staircase is demolished.
Workshop participant Cameron Wilson and construction intern Vidhushekhar gather pieces of concrete.
Vidhu uses an automatic hammer drill to break apart the concrete to make room for a new staircase.
Workshop participants Elisabetta Quaglino and William Holman prepare the form for a slab above what will be a much wider set of stairs.

Between to the new stair construction and the concrete bench [see reports from 7/11 and 7/13] the crew prepares a form for a concrete planter.
[from upper left] Cameron nails wooden slats to the outer part of the form.
An inner form is held in place by wooden spacers and some steel reinforcement is placed into the form to strenghten the concrete.

[from upper left] Concrete has to be inserted and distributed very carefully in this tight form. The crew is Eric Cote, Vidhushekhar, William Holman, Elisabetta Quaglino, Daniela Cardace and Cameron Wilson.
Elisabetta and Cameron finish the surface of the planter.
This planter is located at the lowest level of the new access ramp for deliveries and physically challenged visitors.
This report continues on 9/24/07.

SASHA SHANTI was born on August 16. 2007 and weighed 9 lbs 10 oz. [see posting 8.17.07]
He was born here at Arcosanti in the Begin-Tollas residence, the west foundry apartment.
He is healthy and cheerful and growing in leaps and bounds.

[from upper left] The Arcosanti crew had a baby-shower for the new arrival in the Colly Garden infront of the Vaults.
With a pot-luck of lots of delicious dishes.
Mary Hoadley with Sasha.

[from upper left] Sasha Shanti, almost a month old.
Workshop participant Amber Klatt and cafe manager Carrie Krueger with Sasha.
The proud parents David Tollas and Nadia Begin.
Nadias friend and alumna Segolene Gautier traveled from Canada to be here for the big occasion.

Last week the Arcosanti crew prepared the site for the 26th Annual Colly Concert. This event celebrates 26 years of bringing cultural events to the high desert of central Arizona. The memory of Cosanti Foundation co-founder Colly Woods Soleri is honored with an evening of food, music, and celebration in the Music Center that bears her name.

[from upper left] Cafe crew member Erin Turner and Kristina Soleri, oldest daughter of Paolo Soleri, prepare Granny's Borscht.
The kitchen crew.
Workshop coordinator Matteo Di Michele bastes freshly baked breadsticks with olive oil.
Baker Virginia Schutte displays beautiful italian candy-cookies that will decorate cantaloupe boats with icecream.
The cafe dining room is ready for dinner.
Chef Carrie Krueger put together the menu:
Granny's Borscht, Rosemary Chicken, Eggplant Parmesan, Green Beans with Garlic and Lemon, Parsleyed Potatoes, Bread Sticks, and for dessert Colly's Cantaloupe Boats.

Daniela Soleri, younger daughter of Paolo Soleri, introduced this years performer Sonya Lee with a rememberance that Miss Lee actually lived here at Arcosanti as a baby, during her first year.
Sonya-Kumico Lee is the daughter of alumnus Doug Lee, who worked with Paolo Soleri during many of the early years of the Cosanti Foundation. Doug is a member of the Cosanti Foundation Board of Directors.
This was Miss Lee's sixth appearance at the Colly Soleri Music Center and again she delighted her audience with a passionate and very powerful, a techniqually very difficult yet beautifully accomplished, an awesome performance.

Sonya Lee began her musical studies at the age of three. Since winning her first competition at age seven, Sonya Lee has gone on to win top prizes in national and international piano competitions. She has been heard in concert in such halls as Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall; Lincoln Center; Steinway Hall; the Wheeler Opera House in Aspen, Colorado; the Salles de Colonnes at the Chateau Fontainebleau and Bel Ebat Parc in France; Aoyama Hall in Osaka, Japan; and the Honeni Temple in Kyoto, Japan, among other. Miss Lee has been the featured soloist with festival orchestras throughout Southern California and with the Juilliard Alumni Champer Orchestra at the Proshansky Auditorium at City Universities in NYC. Miss Lee holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Piano Performance from The Juilliard School, where she was a student of Oxana Yablonskaya and Emanuel Ax.

Construction continues at the new Visitors Center entrance [see previous reports from 7/18, 7/13, 7/11, 7/6 and 7/2/07.
The crew, under Dave Tollas tutelage, prepared forms for an extension to the parking space behind the Crafts III building. This area will accommodate delivery trucks for the cafe and bakery, and two parking spaces for vehicles with handicapped visitors.

Dave Tollas has once again resurrected the ancient concrete truck and batch plant, and the crew just hooked together the extensions for the concrete shoot.
David releases the first batch and the crew distributes the concrete into the form.

This crew consists of planning and construction interns Francesca La Malva, Alessandro Bellesia and VidhuShekhar. Landscaping coordinator Ron Chandler helps to teach concrete finishing.

Paolo Soleri traveled to Albuquerque on 9/7/07 at invitation of the AIA Albuquerque, and on Monday evening, 9/10/07 he gave a lecture at the Burton Barr Central Library in Phoenix.

[from upper left] Ed Fitzgerald, AIA President Albuquerque, and Cecilia Portal, Executive Director of AIA Albuquerque, welcome Paolo to the AIA main office.
A pre-lecture reception for gold-ticket holders was given at The Banque Loft Rooftop Terrace, which is located at the corner of Central and 3rd Street in Albuquerque.
AIA President Ed Fitzgerald gave the Welcome Address at the KiMo Theater in Albuquerque. The Introduction was given by renowned Albuquerque architect Bart Prince.
After the lecture Paolo graciously signed books for participants.

The lecture drew a full house with standing room only for some participants. Paolo always has a question and answer period at the end of a lecture.

September 7. was declared Paolo Soleri Day with a Joint Proclamation by Lemoyne F. Blackshear, AIA, State of New Mexico Staff Architect, and Isaac Benton, AIA, City Counselor for City of Albuquerque.

The Monday evening lecture took place at Pulliam Auditorium in the Burton Barr Central Library on 1221 N. Central Avenue in Phoenix, AZ. Paolo spoke again to a room filled to capacity.

We continue the report from 9/5/07 of interior work in the Light Scoop space on the first floor apartment of Unit 10 in the East Crescent.
All the utility lines have been installed, as well as white styrofoam insulation panels against the outer wall. This window and wall face south and this space is planned as the living room. Note the curve in the wall on the right.

This curved wall makes room on the exterior of the apartment for a recessed exit to a small hallway which leads to a staircase to the lower level office.
We will cover a plan of this unit and an image of the outside entrance in the next report.

All throughout the East Crescent, the planning department has specified use of a R13 Ultra Touch - Natural Cotton Fiber Insulation. This insulation is installed over the styrofoam panels to give extra protection against the extreme temperatures in summer and also in the winter month.
We will continue this report on 9/26/07.

Welcome to the September 2. 2007 workshop participants:

[top from left]
Eric Cote, William Holman [construction intern], Daniela Cardace [construction intern], Patrizia Lorio [Arcosanti scholarship] and Joseph Croce.

[middle from left]
Jeffrey Michaels, Elisabetta Quaglino [construction intern], James Magetteri [seminar week], Katie Schroeder [agriculture scholarship]
and Cameron Wilson [construction intern].

[front] Amber Clatt [construction intern] ...

... and Charles Quinlan [seminar week].
A special ‘Welcome Back’ to Charles Quinlan. Charles is a retired Professor of Architecture at CAL Poly in San Luis Obispo, CA. He came to Arcosanti for his first workshop in 1975 and has since then faithfully attended a summer workshop almost every year.

On 8/10 we started a report of interior work in the first floor apartment in Unit 9 of the East Crescent. The apartment next to it, south-east, is located in Unit 10. This apartment is layed out with the living room in the Light Scoop space. [see the exterior view of the apartment in the 8/10 report].

Windows and the exterior door have been installed.
Metalshop coordinator Darina Trendafilova grinds a custom fit door frame to prepare it for primer and paint.

The main room of this apartment has been used for some time as a body-building studio. The weight equipment has now been moved into the main recreation room, which is on the same floor in a seperate space that faces the Colly Soleri Amphitheater.
On 9/10/07 we will continue this report with the interior finishing of the lightscoop space.

We received photos of two alumni reunions this summer, in Seattle, WA and in Boston, MA.
The Seattle group:
Dulce Setterfield, Robert Scully, Alison Moore, Frank Kroger and Anne Tonks.

The Boston group met at Richard McAnany's:
Jeff Stein, Marietta Strano, Modestino Conte, Richard McAnany, Ellen Sokoll and Peter van Erp.
Arcosanti alumni, let us know where you are.
E-mail archives@arcosanti.org.