阿科桑底——试问如果，建筑、生物与城市设计

杰夫·斯坦因/Jeff Stein

尚晋 译/Translated by SHANG Jin

阿科桑底
——试问如果，建筑、生物与城市设计

Arcosanti: What if? Architecture, Biology, and the Design of Cities

杰夫·斯坦因/Jeff Stein

尚晋 译/Translated by SHANG Jin

1 南向全景/Southern exposure（摄影/Photo: Chris Ohlinger）

城市是人类有史以来为互相接触、学习、沟通并交流思想、交换商品和服务而创造的最伟大的工具。中国高速持续的城镇化表明，世界上最古老的文化之一对这种过程是何其重视，而城市对其社会的未来又是何其重要。

当然，城市如何设计，我们以何种模式建造城市，都对地球的生物（和气候）有巨大影响。如今，世界上已有超过一半的人口居住在城市中或城市周围。城市显然已成为地球生态的组成部分。阿科桑底，这个47年前由建筑师鲍罗·索勒里在美国亚利桑那州创立的城市实验室，将城市置于这种生态的中心、地球生物网的中心。理解它并根据它采取行动是我们这一代人的伟大使命：以变革和坚定的努力将人类与地球的关系从破坏改变为与自然共进互利。而最初的模型是由鲍罗·索勒里在阿科桑底为我们提出的。

阿科桑底在为城市设计开辟出新的道路。在这里，我们开始认识到，作为生物体——其实是超级生物体——城市没有得到所需的时间演化成与地球上其他生物模式相符的形式。这种模式是演化性的、紧凑的、密集立体的、复杂而微型的。人脑经过500万年的进化成为这种模式最明显的例子，这也是我们工作的具体原型。

指导原则非常简单：相对于今天在大范围地播散能源、资源和的碎片化时间浪费的城市爆炸，我们倡导的是城市内聚，即以地球有机生物的进化模型为基础的、承载城市密度和精细效能的立体容器。

最近，磁共振扩散成像研究已经标出人脑的深层结构，体现出大脑立体格网的连通性。而这种立体形式我们已经在阿科桑底进行了47年的研究和试验，目的是将它作为城市设计的基础。神经科学家现在提出人脑的三维格网结构“有助于交流、协调、学习……”，我们认为这种三维结构也将帮助城市更好地为居民服务。

因此，阿科桑底的建筑作品就是要使人连通：相互连通、与本地及亚利桑那州中部的生态连通、与太阳和四季连通，以及（至少在感知上）与宇宙的其他部分连通。自我的基础、城市增长的一般基础就是人们对连通的渴望。这就是脸书 （Facebook）风靡全世界的原因；尽管我们需要的只是那种技术。诚然，因为我们现在的城市设计问题百出，以可观的能源、空间和时间的碎片化消耗将我们同真实的面对面沟通隔绝开。阿科桑底意在扭转这种不可持续的趋势，提供一种紧凑、复杂、步行、社区尺度的生活模型。

在过去的47年中有数千人来到阿科桑底帮助设计和建造它，并将它作为一种城市实验室在其中居住一段时间。他们一直痴迷于这种“连通”概念，尤其是在连通生气勃勃的密集城市体验的同时，与周围令人陶醉的自然景观连通。

为了做到这一点，我们让以私人空间（公寓）成为露天圆形剧场、工作空间和公共机构等公共空间的边界。在我们的“东方新月”社区，私人住宅的立面构成了公共剧场的礼堂墙壁。在这里没有危险的汽车和满是CO的街道，每户前门面对的都是精彩绝伦的艺术演出，在观众与表演者之间建立起真实的联系——一切都是人的尺度。此外，社区本身的形式是一个半圆形平面，让人们感受到彼此属于一个真实亲切的社区。最后，带圆形洞口的大板透过立面构成了框景。目的之一是让人在目睹四周浩瀚的大漠时不致感到压迫；二是为在潜意识上与皆由圆形物体构成的宇宙连通：行星、恒星、星系。这种框景让我们想到，自己不就属于太空吗？每块板的实际位置也构成了空间分区，让人感受到公共、半公共、半私人和私人空间的紧密界限。

The city is the greatest tool yet invented for humans to meet, learn, experience each other, and exchange ideas, goods, and services. The rapid and continuing urbanization in China shows how much one of the world's oldest cultures values this experience, and how important cities are to the future of its society.

Cities, of course – how they are designed and the patterns by which we build them – have a tremendous impact on the biology (and the climate) of earth. Now, cities with over half the world's population living in and around them, are clearly an integral part of earth's ecology. Arcosanti, the urban laboratory founded 47 years ago, by architect Paolo Soleri in Arizona, U.S., places cities at the very centre of that ecology, at the very centre of the web of life on earth. Understanding and acting on this is the great work of our generation: the transformative and radical effort to change humanearth relations from disruptive and destructive to naturally enhancing and beneficial, and this was first modelled for us by Paolo Soleri at Arcosanti.

Arcosanti is pioneering a new approach to the design of cities. Here we are beginning to understand that as organisms – hyper-organisms, really – cities have not had the time necessary to evolve their forms in conformance with the pattern of the rest of life on earth. Tat pattern is evolutionary, compact, intensely three-dimensional, complex, and miniaturized. The human brain, after five million years of evolution is the clearest example of this pattern, and it is the physical model for our work.

2 索勒里办公室与起草单位/Te S.O.D. Unit-Soleri Office and Drafting Unit（摄影/Photo: Alfonso Elia）

The guiding principle is simple. Instead of the current urban explosion which spreads a thin film of energy, resources, and time-wasting sprawl across great distances, we are arguing for urban implosion: three-dimensional containers of urban intensity and elegant efficiency based on the evolving model of organic life on earth.

Recent research using diffusion spectrum magnetic resonance imaging has mapped deep brain structure in humans. The result points to connectivity in the brain as a three-dimensional grid, the same three-dimensional form that we at Arcosanti have been researching and experimenting with for 47 years as a basis for the design of cities. Neuroscientists now suggest the human brain's 3D grid structure 'aids communication, coordination,learning…' We think this same three-dimensional structure will help cities perform better for their human inhabitants as well.

5 从南侧望向半圆铸造车间及西屋和大拱顶/Te Foundry Apse with West Housing and the Vaults viewed from south（摄影/ Photo: Yuki Yanagimoto）

6 科桑底基金会每年在阿科桑底举办意大利之夜音乐会与晚宴/Te Cosanti Foundation presents its Italian Night concert and dinner at Arcosanti annually（摄影/Photo: Hanne Sue Kirsch）

Thus, the work of architecture at Arcosanti is to connect people: to each other, to this place and its central Arizona ecology, to the sun and seasons, and – at least perceptually – to the rest of the cosmos itself. Basic to our identity, basic to the growth of cities universally, is the human desire to be connected. It is how Facebook has become so ubiquitous throughout the world; although we only need that technology, really, because our current cities are so ill designed, separating us from real face-to-face contact with each other through their pattern of massive energy, space, and time-wasting sprawl. Arcosanti intends to counteract that unsustainable trend, providing a model for life on a compact, complex, walkable, community scale.

The several thousand people who have come to Arcosanti over the past 47 years to help design and construct it, and live in it for a time as a kind of urban laboratory, continue to be invested in this notion of 'connection', especially connecting to both a vibrant intense urban experience and, at the same time, to the terrific natural landscape that immediately surrounds us here.

To do that we have made architecture whose private spaces – apartments – form the boundary of public space–open-air amphitheatres, work places, institutions, etc. In our East Crescent neighbourhood, the facades of private homes create the auditorium wall of a public theatre. Here, instead of facing dangerous car and CO filled streets, everyone's front door opens onto really extraordinary performing arts events, cementing a physical connection to audiences and performers alike, all at a human scale. In addition, the form of the neighbourhood itself, a semi-circle in plan, allows people to experience each other as part of a real physical community. Finally, there are largescale panels with circular openings in them that frame views through the facades, first, so that perceiving the vast surrounding desert landscape does not become overwhelming; and second, to provide a subconscious connection to a universe which is essentially made of round things: planets, stars, galaxies. Such a frame reminds us that we are part of all that. Moreover, each panel's physical placement also provides for spatial zoning, allowing a sense of the close-up boundaries of public, semipublic, semi-private, and private space.

Arcosanti is described as an urban laboratory. This means through its continued construction we are experimenting with several aspects of urban design: building form, building performance, and integrating aspects of cultural endeavour, energy production, heating and cooling, food growing, and waste recycling into the architecture of the city itself. We are making architecture do more work than ever before, and Arcosanti is doing this in ways that are intended to be elegant, economically affordable, and durable. As we continue, of course, we are actively seeking partners whose own work in other parts of the world can benefit from helping to finance and construct these experimental prototypes, and learn from them, at Arcosanti.

In this laboratory, our aim is to embody many of Paolo Soleri's ideas into the very fabric of the architecture itself. Take the idea that 'all life is connected'. Tis is not a notion that Soleri invented, but it is an idea that he agreed with and one that the architecture at Arcosanti supports. It does so by means of form, scale, colour, texture, mass, the tools all architects have – and use – to embody ideas in their buildings.

3 半圆陶瓷作坊/Ceramics Apse（摄影/Photo: Tomiaki Tamura）

4 2016年在半圆陶瓷作坊进行的演出/2016 performance in the Ceramics Apse（摄影/Photo: Hanne Sue Kirsch）

阿科桑底可以称得上一座城市实验室。这是说在它的持续建造中，我们对城市设计的多个方面进行了试验：建筑形式和建筑性能等。我们还将文化因素、能源生产、供暖和制冷、种植食物和废物回收等方面整合到城市自身的建筑中。我们还让建筑发挥比过去更多的功能，而阿科桑底正在以精致、经济和耐久的方式将它实现。当然，随着工作进一步开展，我们在积极寻找特定的伙伴——他们在世界其他地方的作品能通过帮助阿科桑底这些试验原型提供资金并进行建造而受益，并从中汲取经验。

在这个实验室里，我们的目标是在这个建筑自身的机体中体现鲍罗·索勒里的诸多思想。比如“万生皆通”的思想，这不是索勒里提出的概念，而是他认同的一种思想，也是阿科桑底建筑支持的思想。这种思想是通过形式、尺度、颜色、质地、体量来实现的，这些是所有建筑师在其建筑中体现思想所具备和使用的手段。

在阿科桑底，我们的建筑沿着一系列尺度和复杂性不断增大的原型结构推进。每个都保留着一种“朴素”感，而这是另一个源自生物界的基本建筑文化思想。

拱券

从试验区中心开始，阿科桑底在1970年代建成的第一座建成作品是这些高大的曲形拱券，它们代表着一种庇护之下的公共空间。它使视线集中、供人漫步，并以最少的必要建筑连接起未来东西侧的建筑。

半圆陶瓷作坊

美国建筑师路易·康将街道称作“城市客厅”。漫步其中就能欣赏到余生之中尽情享受的东西。充斥着危险的汽车和C O的现代街道绝不是康所期望的学习中心。但在阿科桑底这座步行小镇，人们会路过一座半圆殿形式的建筑，即一个1/4球体。其中的活动一目了然，人们甚至可以参与其中。这座建筑是一个陶瓷作坊/工作室，通过这个半圆殿的开口与太阳、四季和社区的其他人相连通。这种形式的半圆殿留出第四面墙向世界敞开，而正是这面墙让大多数建筑与世隔绝。

半圆铸造车间项

随后在阿科桑底建造的是另一座半圆殿，里面是一个青铜钟铸造车间。同样的开敞形式让车间与世界连通，半圆殿加厚的北墙上加设的一系列住宅公寓使它更加繁复。在这里住宅与车间连为一体，二者又通过形式和材料与自然界连通。

东方新月

接下来在阿科桑底建成的是一整个住宅区和公共机构（档案馆、办公楼、教室、图书馆、学生宿舍）。它们采用了曲形半圆殿的经典线条，并使它与表演艺术的圆形剧场连通。这样人们就能感受到非同凡响的时刻，体会生命的无限可能，因为他们居住的建筑通过形式和尺度将他们都连在了一起。阿科桑底的东方新月不会让人在独户住宅中看电视，使建筑（及其住户）与自然和文化生态隔绝开，而要让人连通所有这一切以及自身的潜能，还有从世界各地定期来这里在家家户户门口表演的艺术家。

建筑师鲍罗·索勒里的意图是在建筑中实现空间与宁静。对于他来说，指导思想一直是“建筑生态”，即以建筑和生态作为地球整个生物系统的两大部分。索勒里对于它是这样说的：“我们——人类——是自然的一部分，但我们追求的是自然无法给予的：公平、同情、思维的创作。这种创作决定了一种新自然，这种已然令人惊叹的过程的非凡组成它是不断演变的宇宙。”

7 东方新月，克里·索勒里圆形剧场/East Crescent, the Colly Soleri Amphitheatre（摄影/Photo: Hanne Sue Kirsch）

阿科桑底代表着一种形成中的“建筑生态”原型，一种意在从核心消除汽车、取代城郊扩张的步行导向城市。由于这种形式——向太阳和四季展示自身和居民的方式——它也能在地球的生物系统中运转得更好。它可以能效很高，生产能源为自身供电，并能依靠一系列太阳能温室生产食物供市民享用。在更深的层次上，建筑生态的概念承认城市是地球上最新的生物体。倘若它们（和在其中的我们）要繁荣兴旺，我们的城市设计就必须符合其他成功生物体所遵循的原则：“微型化”和“复杂性”的双重原则。其目的是让建筑向上生长而不是铺开，并以此建造密集的立体城市，模拟出地球上其他生命进化而成的形式。建筑生态密集、复杂的特性能将日常生活中商品、服务和思想交换与交流所需的时间、能源和资源降至最少。

我们可以满怀信心地说：全世界的新一代都渴望创造实用持久的东西，担负对这种文化具有实际价值的工作。今天的青年人可以看到，几乎我们所有的建筑和用地模式都已过时。面对日益增长的人口以及我们对化石燃料和所有能源不断变化的态度（和价格），我们在地球上居住的方式需要改变，这是显而易见的，并且要尽快。有助于这一转变的思想来自哪里？对于建筑和城市规划，来源之一就是阿科桑底——即便是在初创期。

阿科桑底工作坊自1970年启动以来吸引了7000多名学生，并一直是这个项目的教育重点。阿科桑底工作坊是最杰出的试验教育：在美妙绝伦的景观和位置实际建造优美而实用的作品。随着高等教学愈发全球化，阿科桑底对于全球教育的价值不断拓展。

在阿科桑底的发展过程中，两件事是肯定不变的：渴望建造更好未来的热心人摩肩接踵，希望我们建筑周围的沙漠景观生态得以保存。欢迎您来阿科桑底作客。

At Arcosanti, our architecture has taken the path of a series of prototype structures of everincreasing scale and complexity, each retaining a sense of 'frugality', another of the primary architectural and cultural ideas that comes from the world of biology.

Vaulted Arches

Beginning at the centre of the development, the first structures built at Arcosanti in the early 1970s were these soaring, curved arches, marking a protected public space that focuses views, provides a promenade, and connects future construction east and west with the very least amount of architecture necessary to do so.

Ceramics Apse

American architect Louis Kahn described the street as an 'urban living room', down which a young person, as she walked, might see what she would like to do for the rest of her life. Modern streets, filled with dangerous cars and carbon monoxide are hardly the learning centre Kahn hoped they would be. However, at Arcosanti, a pedestrian town, people passing by a building in the form of an apse, a quarter of a sphere, can easily see what goes on within, and even take part in it. In the case of this building, a ceramics studio/work place is connected to sun, seasons, and the rest of the community by means of this apse opening. This form, the apse, opens up to the world by not building a fourth wall, the construction of which in most buildings actually shuts out pretty much everything.

Foundry Apse

Next to be constructed at Arcosanti was another apse, sheltering a bronze bell foundry. Te same open form connects a workplace to the world, with the added complexity of a series of residential apartments in the thickened north wall of the apse. Here the domestic is connected to the workplace and both are connected to the natural world through form and materials.

East Crescent

Next in line at Arcosanti has been the construction of an entire neighbourhood of residences and institutional spaces (archives, offices, classrooms, a library, student dormitory) that take the classical line of the curved apse and connect it to a performing arts amphitheatre. Thus, people are in touch with extraordinary moments, with life's possibilities, because the architecture in which they live connects them all by means of its form and scale. At Arcosanti's East Crescent, instead of watching television in the isolation of a singlefamily house whose architecture has disconnected it (and its inhabitants) from its natural and cultural ecology, people are connected to all this, plus to their own potential – and to that of artists from around the world who regularly perform in this space on everyone's doorstep.

For architect Paolo Soleri, whose intent was to achieve both space and silence in his architecture, the Parti – the big, guiding idea – has always been 'Arcology' architecture and ecology as two parts of a whole biological system on the earth. Here is what Soleri said about it: 'WE – humans – are part of nature, but we seek that which nature cannot deliver: equity, compassion, the work of the mind. That work defines a kind of NEO-nature, a divine component to an already astonishing process, the evolving cosmos.'

Arcosanti represents a prototype 'Arcology'-in-the-making, a pedestrian-oriented city meant to eliminate cars from its core and, as a result, provide an alternative to suburban sprawl. Because of its form – the way it displays itself and its inhabitants to the sun and seasons – it also becomes a better performer within earth's biological system. It can be quite energy efficient, able to produce energy to power itself, and through a series of solar greenhouses, able to produce food to power its citizens. At a deeper level, the notion of Arcology recognizes that cities are the newest organisms on the planet. If they (and we in them) are to flourish, our urban design must conform to guidelines adapted by other successful organisms: the twin rules of 'miniaturization' and 'complexity'. The intention is to build up not out, and thus create a dense 3-dimensional city, mimicking the evolved forms of the rest of life on earth. Te dense, complex nature of Arcology could minimize the amount of time, energy, and resources necessary to exchange goods, services, and ideas in everyday life.

We can say this with confidence: there is a hunger among the new generation worldwide to make something useful and lasting, to undertake work that is of real value to the culture. Young people today can see that nearly our entire building stock and the pattern in which it is laid out on the land, is obsolete. In the face of rising populations and our changing attitudes about, and the price of fossil fuels and energy use in general, it is clear that how we inhabit the earth needs to change, and quickly. Where are ideas coming from that can help this transition? In architecture and urban planning, one of those sources – even in its infancy – is Arcosanti.

8 鲍罗·索勒里特别纪念物/Paolo Soleri Special Assemblies（摄影/Photo: Chris Ohlinger）

The workshop program at Arcosanti, which has attracted more than 7000 students to the project since its inception in 1970, continues to be a primary educational focus of the project. The Arcosanti workshops are experiential education at its finest: actual construction of beautiful and useful work in an extraordinary landscape and location. With the increasing globalization of higher learning, Arcosanti's value to educational programs worldwide continues to expand.

Two things are sure to remain constant as Arcosanti evolves: the flow of curious minds eager to build a better future, and the beautiful and preserved ecology of the desert landscape surrounding our building site. We invite you to visit us at Arcosanti.

作者介绍：杰夫·斯坦因是亚利桑那州科桑底基金会副主席获奖建筑师与作家。科桑底基金会由国际著名建筑师鲍罗·索勒里于60年前创立，负责亚利桑那州中部的阿科桑底城市实验室的持续设计和建造。/Award winning architect and writer, Jeff Stein is Co-President of the Cosanti Foundation in Arizona. The Cosanti Foundation, begun 60 years ago, by internationally renowned architect Paolo Soleri, is responsible for ongoing design and construction of the urban laboratory Arcosanti, in central Arizona.

2017-03-05