This article from the Berkeley Barb sheds light on an event at UC Berkeley titled “The City, The Garden, The Future,” which centered on visions of ecology and connectivity between living systems. It brought together futuristic urban designer Paolo Soleri and horiticulturist Alan Chadwick, two men who were “in many ways divergent, or converse in their thinking and acting”.
Soleri coined and frequently used the term ‘arcology’ — a mix of ‘architecture’ and ‘ecology’ that spoke to a form of futuristic design thinking that would encompass entire cities. Meanwhile Chadwick spent years learning and mastering French-intensive biodynamic gardening methods, growing high crop yields in small garden plots. Despite being linked by similar interests and disciplines, the two men had entirely different theories and practices. By coming together and speaking at the university, they could spread these new ideas to a broader audience interested in new ways to think about ecology and healthy living.
These two men’s futuristic ideas converged at a gathering at the Integral Urban House in May 1976. It was a culminating point in the IUH’s mission to be a hub for ecological knowledge and energy flows optimization. Inviting outside guests with radical new ideas on urban ecological living demonstrated the outside influence Berkeley and the IUH had upon the urban homesteading community. The IUH had become a platform to promote and spread these new ideologies.
They spoke to a group of around 30 local environmentalists, where their ideas could truly flourish in the company of like-minded people. Some of these attendants included Huey Johnson, president of the Trust for Public Land; Helga Olkowski, co-founder of the Farallones Institute and author of The City Peoples’ Book of Raising Food; and Ernest Callenbach, writer of Ecotopia and Living Poor with Style.
The article approaches Soleri’s and Chadwick’s ideologies from a more conceptual angle. The author does not dwell on their education or past experiences, but focuses on the ideas they bring to the table: “how to integrate community, how to manifest a more visionary ecology — one which deals with the structure and the meaning of things at the same time, and experiences them as innately springing from each other.”
