Stephanie Smith: Creating Spa-like Environments
Architect John Jerde brought with him Stephanie Smith who was a protege of his who had also worked with another well known architect Rem Koolhas. She seemed to be flirting with the same kind of capitalist approach as Jerde. Her work with Koolhas as a Harvard GSD student which was more theoretical also seemed to reflect a more commercial approach: she wrote a section of a book by Koolhas called Great Leap Forward as part of her work as a Harvard GSD student in 1997. Her section was titled To Grow Rich is Glorious and was about the Chinese Economic Miracle and its impact on the architecture in China. What was more interesting however was what Smith discussed that did converge with the potential I saw in Arcosanti and how it related to my vision of Paolo Soleri's aesthetic ideal that I thought was best represented by Cosanti, rather than the more one-dimensional, monolithic Arcosanti 5000 and repetitive Lean Linear City designs (that were envisioned to go for as far as the eye could see with the same design and building form). She discussed the idea of creating a "spa like environment" in her presentation in 2001 at the Paradox III Conference.
She seemed very affected by what just had happened a few days on 9/11 and she spoke a bit about this during her presentation to the audience at Paradox. What I interpreted from her was that people needed a place to heal and that meant building more architecture that reflected the need to create places for people to heal. Creating a spa like environment seemed very important to her as an architect and as a person.
I identified with this deeply and I stayed in contact for a time after meeting her. We later met again at the LA Ecovillage with Lois Arkin (LA Ecovillage founder). I continue to see her idea of creating a Spa-like environment as one of my greatest inspirations both at the conference and in general. It was her presentation that inspired me to create the idea of EdenSpace - that central to a massive social movement and transformation for real and authentic change in how we do things, must be a process for deep inner healing and personal transformation. The importance of architecture and aesthetics in this process is what led me to link Soleri's Cosanti with her vision of creating spa-like environments - it was the major creating force for EdenSpace.
References:
To Grow Rich is Glorious was attributed to Chinese Communist Party Secretary Deng Xiaoping who served from 1978-1990s: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Deng_Xiaoping
More about Smith's collaboration with Koolhas on his book Great Leap Forward: http://stephaniesmithsofar.wordpress.com/category/economics/to-get-rich-is-glorious/
Great Leap Forward Amazon Page: http://www.amazon.com/Forward-Harvard-Design-School-Project/dp/3822860484