A formative experience for me was the several year "tour of duty" as a "ArcoNaut" at Arcosanti from 2000 - 2003. This was an opportunity to participate in a unique experiment that sees itself as an alternative to the American dream centered around materialism, suburban sprawl and conspicuous consumerism. The backdrop to living and working at Arcosanti and being immersed in Soleri's big idea about Urban Sustainability called Arcology, was the relatively sudden emergence of "sustainability" into the lexicon of the mainsteam society with terms like: ecological design, green business, natural capitalism, biomimickry, cultural creatives, green architecture etc. And of course, Paolo Soleri was also at the time preparing to modify his already formidable lexicon of complex words and concepts to address sustainable from his counterpoint of the seeing much of the sustainability as putting forward "a better kind of wrongness" and therefore seeking to correct this with his idea of real sustainability, the Lean Alternative.
Participating and co-creating in this fascinating mix of new terms, concepts and ideas at Arcosanti during the dawn of the mainstream's embrace of sustainability I met many interesting people and participated in a series of events and workshops. The apex of this for me was my chance to be at Arcosanti during Paradox III, as the 3rd and final installment in the Paraodox Conference series. The events were sponsored and co-produced by Michael Gosney's Green Century Institute.The 3rd conference took place in September of 2001, just after the 9/11 terrorist attack.