Thursday Posting: Defense Architecture: Moats

Barrier

“A deep, wide ditch surrounding a castle, fort, or town, typically filled with water and intended as a defense against attack.”

-Merriam Webster Dictionary

Colin, Chris.  “Sipping from a Utopian Well in the Desert.”  The New York Times.  16 Sept.

            2007. 

In this article Colin discusses the ecological-friendly community Arcosanti, located right outside of Phoenix, Arizona.  Arcosanti is the design of Italian architect Paolo Soleri, a former Frank Lloyd Wright student.  Construction started in 1970, and has yet to be completed.  As Colin explains it, “With its radical conservation techniques and a brilliantly scrunched-together layout, Arcosanti was intended to reinvent not just the city, but also man's relationship to the planet: picture a 60s vision of a Mars colony, but with a cutting-edge, eco-friendly design. Evaporative cooling pools release moisture into the air. In winter, heat from the foundry furnace is collected by a hood and sent through the apartments above.”  This revolutionary community, referred to by Mr. Soleri as his “desert utopia” has yet to be finished.  Despite this, however, Arcosanti is home to about 100 residents.  Colin describes Arcosanti : “An educated, diversely aged and surprisingly international collection of residents rises early each morning for on-site duties: silt casting, or foundry work, or a general tending of the odd, gray structures they call home.”  Currently Arcosanti faces financial problems; funding to keep the place running is getting short.  In the plans for this utopian commune but yet to be built is an “energy apron around the perimeter, wherein greenhouses trap heat and disperse it throughout the apartments in winter months; there, enormous concrete armatures reaching out to one day support a canopy for the music center. A moat runs around the stage, cooling it.” You can experience Arcosanti yourself, with rooms running anywhere from $30 to $100 a night, depending on the view. 

I really enjoyed reading this article about a sort of failed utopia that still manages to serve a purpose, and a good one at that.  It was also the only article I found that mentioned a new and different use of a moat other than as a protective barrier.  But perhaps one can look at the use of a moat to cool a space as different kind of protection—a protection from increasingly hostile environmental changes.