The term arcology was coined by the Italian architect Palo Soleri to refer to a type of architectural design

focused on dense, efficient, sustainable housing, and living spaces

that would allow occupants to live in comfort without using as many resources as they might consume

organized in some other fashion. This concept, and Solari's larger body of work, has heavily influenced

sustainable architecture more broadly, even though a true archaeology, as envisioned by Soleri,

has never been built. He did get started on one, though, an experimental town about 70 miles north

of Phoenix in the state of Arizona called

Arcosanti but this town has never been completed and as of today operates primarily as a

tourist attraction run by a non-profit that leads workshops on sustainable concepts

developed by Solari and other architects who have a similar point of view about how we

should live.

Though he didn't always use the same language to describe what he was doing,

the architect, inventor, and futurist, Buckminster Fuller, was also fond of the concept

of building sustainable, enclosed, cities as systems that were built from the ground up to

be self-reliant and eminently efficient.

Fuller is perhaps best known for his geodesic domes, space-frame trusses and Dimaxian line of homes,

cars, and modular buildings.

But he was also a huge fan of what amounted to archaeologies, even going so far as to propose one called

the Old Man Rivers City Project as a solution to a housing crisis in East St. Louis, Missouri

back in the 1970s. His proposed plan, which would have been a housing project for the existing

70,000 or so residents, that would have also held a maximum of 125,000 people,

would have been enclosed in a circular, multi-terrists dome. This dome would have provided each

...