That’s how a book should be written, over a whole lifetime, and still unfinished.
When we reached Arcosanti, the evening light was breaking on the tips of the larches and cupolas of the experimental town… After we moved to Arizona in 1996, we visited this place, the primary concept of which was the connection between architecture and ecology (arcology). And now, twenty years later, I had to talk Harun into turning off the main road to come here to see how the settlement had changed in the meantime. The architect, Paolo Soleri, had died two years earlier. Half a century since the building began, the town is still not finished. We spent too little time there, because Harun was in a hurry, but I was nevertheless left with the impression of that incompleteness. This is how everything ought to be built, so that the process lasts indefinitely. That’s how a book should be written, over a whole lifetime, and still unfinished. I would like it if everything of mine was like this town, in a state of constant youth.
—Semezdin Mehmedinovic, My Heart: A Novel. Celia Hawkesworth (Translator). (Catapult, March 9, 2021)
