Paolo Soleri Quotes

“Each brain is the storage of the past.”

“I am routine oriented. Passion would make me a wreck.”

“I don’t have an ideology. I work on the basis of evolutionary guidelines because seven billion personas are in terrible danger. The past of human habitat is an open book of pros and cons. Self-creation is rainbowlike, consisting of all colors.”

“If an architect's ego is very small, he is done for it; if it is vast then he might make some very important contributions.”

“It is only logical that the pauperization of our soul and the soul of society coincide with the pauperization of the environment. One is the cause and the reflection of the other.”

“Our automobile culture has segregated our communities, wasted our resources and moved us away from the glory of culture, which should be appreciated as a great miracle.”

“Our throw-away culture has made obsolescence the measure of its dynamism. The pernicious effect of planned obsolescence is the erosion of excellence.”

“Somehow, after 200 years, we have become hyper consumers possessed by materialism, buying our happiness.”

“Twenty years ago I proposed that physical, emotional, racial and functional segregation were a greater evil than waste, pollution and environmental destruction. I think that I was on target then and that I am now.”

“Unless we moderate, unless we reinvent the American dream, then it’s not going to be a dream. It’s going to be doomsday.”

“We must redefine the American Dream before we rebuild the infrastructure on which it is based.”

“We put solar panels on a single family home but can’t change the impact of inefficient construction or the consumption inherent to moving around the suburbs. We buy hybrid cars but must drive in the gridlocks of daily commutes. We buy ‘green washed’ products but continue the same hyper consumption that sprawl mandates. These improvements produce a better kind of wrongness.”

“Within the architectural profession, I distinguish between the form givers, with the orchids they often produce, and the forest architects. Given the number of people in need of shelter, we require the equivalent of the forest, that is, cities coherently designed. In the urban forest, orchids are welcomed as orchids might be welcomed in the organic forest.

The architect who is mainly dedicated to creating beautiful orchids for an elite minority and public structures like airports, corporate buildings, libraries, museums, etc., is less engaged in producing the forests (cities) that seven billion people need. I am engaged in the forest feasibility not through reforming existing malfeasances but through the total reformulation of habitat itself.”