Interview with Paolo Soleri Paolo Soleri was born in Turin, Italy in 1919. He moved to Arizona in 1947 to work with Frank Lloyd Wright. Observing the development and expansion of Phoenix, he began conceiving more efficient methods of designing cities. His ideas coalesced into his theory of "arcology," a fusion of architecture with ecology, which he used to begin building Arcosanti in 1970. Arcosanti is located 70 miles north of Phoenix in the Arizona desert. It is currently 3% complete and home to 80 of the 5,000 residents it is designed to accommodate.