We continue with a report on the tile work in the small studio apartment, EC Unit 10-1.
Alumnus Dan Kelliher helped with tiling apartments in the East Crescent.
First, whole tiles are laid out, so that the spaces that will require cut tiles can be carefully adjusted.

The second stage consists of setting the full tiles. Before a tile is set in, a thin layer of thin-set is applied, acting as the adhesive between the tile and the concrete floor.

In the left side image, mortar has been applied in the grooves between tiles.
In the photo on the right-side, the corner pieces have been cut and laid out.
We will continue with a report on the tiling of the shower in this apartment on 2/2/09.

Today, we complete the report on the Solimene Ceramics Factory.
As mentioned before, Paolo Soleri was asked to incorporate a residence in the design for the Solimene Ceramics factory. He positioned the residential space on the roof level of the main building. In this photo, the residence is visible above the top left corner of the main structure.

Located five floors above ground level, the house opens up to marvelous views towards the sea on one side and the mountains on the other.

The exterior walls of the house have been decorated with red and green ceramic cones, replicating the pattern on the front façade of the factory.
We can only be thankful that in 1952, Vincenzo Solimene, the heir of a historical family of ceramists, impressed by Soleri's clay model proposal for the new factory, made it possible for Paolo Soleri to leave a footprint in his native Italy.
With this, we conclude the report on Paolo Soleri's Solimene Ceramics Factory at Vietri sul Mare.

There has been a problem with our internet access, apologies for missing postings.

We continue with the report on the Solimene Ceramics factory, designed by Paolo Soleri in 1952.
Visitors enter the factory on ground level where they can look at various ceramic products. Then, to reach the top level, which Soleri conceived as a public exhibition space between sky and landscape, the guests climb up the spiral ramp (for photos see report from Jan. 14, 2009).

On the way up all phases of production are visible. These photos show some of the activities that go on in the factory. In the top left corner of this photo collage, a man is putting a final glazing on plates. In the top right corner photo, taken from the second level, people are hand-painting ceramic objects.
The bottom images are from the third and fourth levels, where clay is molded in various shapes.

On this last section of the ramp more Solimene products are exhibited.

In her book "SOLERI - Architecture As Human Ecology", Professor Iolanda Lima describes the Solimene Ceramic factory both in words and images.
Excerpt from the book:
"The building, which is both a work of art and a place for production, defies classification. With his design, Soleri came up with a wholly new idea that assimilated and reinterpreted the ancient custom of creating a courtyard to serve as a central space, a laboratory for daily life that linked the inside and the outside.
A spiraling ascent brings the site's various levels indoors. This is architecture that allows for both movement and rest, arranged continuously from ground to roof, all in dialectic with what is produced.
Three of the floors are involved in the production cycle, starting at the third level and descending to the ground level, where the finished products arrive ready for direct sale or for loading onto trucks that enter on a road specially built for this purpose.
A terrace garden covering the top of the whole building was conceived as a public exhibition space between sky and landscape. To reach it, the visitor ascends the indoor spiral ramp and therefore experiences all phases of production, thus entering the complex man-made dialectic.
The climb from bottom to top highlights the decreasing width of the cantilevered floors in the large interior space while also providing a continuous view of ongoing work and the transformation of clay.
This structure provides an extraordinary promenade built on complex networks. It banishes the loneliness and monotony of the traditional factory and evidences the individual autonomous actions required for production, expressing the rhythms of the various phases. It offers exchanges, relationships, and comparisons, encouraging an optimal stimulating life – work as an ethical value. "

The next report will show images of the residential unit located on the roof of the building.

This third report on Paolo Soleri's Solimene Ceramics factory at Vietri Sule Mare will focus on the façade of the building.
In this photo, we see pillars already cast and the first sections with ceramic cones have been installed.

In this image, the building frame is nearly finished, and the entire façade is ready for the mounting of more ceramic cones and glass panes for the windows.

Alfonso Elia took this photo of the Solimene Factory in the summer of 2008.

This is the second part of a series of reports on the Solimene factory at Vierti sul Mare, Italy.
In this original Soleri drawing, one can see the ingenuous structural composition of the building. The tree-like columns, tapering from a base of 4 feet to a top of 8 inches, provide support for the roof and cantilevered slabs and also elegantly frame the central atrium.
The drawing measures 24 by 14 inches and was executed in pencil and china ink on vellum.

These are 1953 black and white photos taken by Colly Soleri during construction of the factory. The left one shows scaffolding and formwork still in place for pouring of the final slabs. In the photo on the right, the skylight-perforated roof has been cast.

This is a 2006 interior view of the Solimene Ceramics factory. The photo was taken by Alfonso Elia, who generously took several trips to Vietri sul Mare and presented the Soleri Archives with spectacular images of the building.

In 1952,Vizenzo Solimene, an entrepreneurial ceramist, approached Paolo Soleri about designing a ceramic factory in the southern Italian town of Vietri sul Mare. In two years, the Solimene Ceramics factory stood erect and has since been a bright example of Soleri's visionary architecture.
The daring façade of the building serves a double function. The glass sections allow for natural light to penetrate deep inside, while the solid wall sections, clad in ceramic cones made at the factory, promote the Solimene products.

For the Solimene Factory,
Soleri was asked to provide production, commercial and residential space. He put the residential unit on top of the main structure. From there, the entire building is united by a spiral ramp that envelops the central interior space. The building's location on a steep hill makes clay delivery from the top easy. From there, the clay would travel down the ramp through the different stages of production, until it reaches the bottom level where it is sold at the Solimene gift shop. The interior of the space breathes with light coming from street windows and roof skylights.

Here are some of the drawings Soleri presented before construction for the factory begun. The section and plan drawings were executed with pencil and black and colored china ink on velum paper. These early Soleri drawings are now kept at the Soleri Archives located at Arcosanti.

This completes a series of reports about the Paolo Soleri Amphitheater in Santa Fe, New Mexico. [see 1/2, 1/5, 1/7 and 1/9/09].
With a closer look at the model we see the entrance gradually sloped to reach the below ground level amphitheater.
The long entrance runway was dug and the earth sculpted to provide a rigid body upon which a thin shell of concrete was poured.

Here is an image of the entrance, taken by Raffaele in August last year.

A bridge across the roof of the stage is also visible in the model, and here is an image from Raffaele the shows the bridge very well.

SOLERI'S OPEN-AIR THEATER IN SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO
from "Soleri architecture as Human Ecology" by Antonietta Iolanda Lima, published by Jaca Books, 2000.

In 1964 Lloyd Kiva New, president of the Institute of American Arts and a friend and admirer of Soleri, commissioned him to build a three-hundred-seat open-air theater that would both serve its traditional function and "frame the moon and sun."
Soleri accepted the assignment, although he still believed that the city should be the true focus of architecture.
For Soleri, the open-air theater offered another chance to experiment with low-cost materials in close connection with the environment.
What he was after was not so much stage mobility as synergy among the participants. He achieved this by creating a stage and seating with no division, a place where actors and musicians could interact with spectators.
It was a work of brutal expressionism that made the environment vibrant through an asyntactic division of space and elements that created pronounced dissonance. There were Corbusian reflections (the master plan for Chandigarh) in the plastic movement of the masses.
A large, upside-down vault was built above the stage and intersected with a bridge, creating natural flow in a tangle of shapes, projections, variously organized elements, and stairs.
Soleri said of the project:
We were hoping actors would use not just the stage, but also the area above it, and that's why we designed the bridge and other platforms. It was meant to be similar to the Elizabethan theater, with action taking place on different levels .....
The notion of using the local landscape, geology, and natural materials was an integral part of the process. We molded earth and arranged the arches, then we excavated trenches and poured concrete to form the walls, using a technique that captures the consistency and shape of the earth itself. Rock, gravel, sand, and so forth were intentionally incorporated into the surfaces.

We continue our report from 1/7/09 on the construction of the Paolo Soleri Amphitheater in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
With the earth mound in shape, a retaining wall was built around the base.

Above the retaining wall, a large number of triangular plywood shapes were constructed and placed around the sides of the mound.
These became the textured formwork upon which the curved concrete supports were cast. By damming small parts of the formwork, windows were left in the concrete which would allow glimpses of the surrounding environment. In this way, Soleri transformed the concave structure into a complex veil.

Here is the Amphitheater today, in one of Raffaele Elbas recent photos.
The texture of the coffered roof and back wall is clearly visible and seems to contribute to the accoustical qualities of the space.
There will be one more report of this sequence on 1/12/09.

This continues the report from 1/5/09 of construction of the Paolo Soleri Santa Fe Amphitheater in 1965.
The sprayed shell of concrete was layered in place, with steel rebar placed between concrete pours.

This earth casting created a permanent impression of the Earth and a shelter structure for the soon to be excavated stage area.

Next stage was this earth mound that provides the form for part of the apse that frames the back of the stage.
We continue on 1/9/09.

This is the second part of a report on the Paolo Soleri Amphitheater in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Paolo Soleri and apprentices view a model for the Santa Fe theater on display in the North Apse at Cosanti in 1964.

At all stages of Soleri’s design, the amphitheater complex dwarfs it’s users. There is a bridge spanning the monumental, but not massive structure. The amphitheater occupies a small site and seats a humble number in the audience.
The stage, originally framed by an apse, was given new definition when its shelter was turned upside-down, a dramatic gesture to the sky.
Soleri was influenced by Elizabethan actor-theater interactions and in an interview for New Mexico magazine in 1993, Soleri said that he hoped “actors would use not only the stage, but the area above it as well as the bridge and the other platforms that were designed into the structure."

Construction of the amphitheater occurred as a progression of earth shifting, and was instructed by Soleri. Students at the IAIA helped in the construction alongside apprentices from the Cosanti Foundation.
First, the bowl-shaped roof form was carved into the earth and deep wells were dug for the supporting columns.
Story continues on 1/7/09.

Italian architecture student Raffaele Elba worked in the Soleri Archives during his scholarship and workshop in the summer and fall of 2008.
During this time he visited the Soleri Amphitheater in Santa Fe, New Mexico and brought back recent photos.

In 1965 the IAIA (INSTITUTE OF AMERICAN INDIAN ARTS) approached Paolo Soleri to design an out-door amphitheater at its campus in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The amphitheater would house a growing tradition of American Indian performance arts, and Soleri later said that the open-air theater would “frame the moon and sun”. Soleri’s design called for a dramatically upwardly-shaped, earth cast concrete structure to cover the performance area.

The magic of performance beckons attendees to a semi-circular seating space which surrounds the open-air stage. The Paolo Soleri Amphitheater has been used for events ranging from internationally publicized rock concerts to IAIA graduation ceremonies. The amphitheater is the permanent venue of the annual Native Roots and Rhythms Festival.
We continue this report on 1/5/09 with more of Raffaeles photos and images of the actual construction.

Best Wishes for the New Year!