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I'm interested in the idea that we can define what a very good house is. It is, according to my thinking, a purely materialistic thing. By creating forms out of matter we can create a very good house. What distinguishes a very good house is not the matter - it's all just matter - I mean, yes, we select the materials - concrete here, steel there, some wood, and so on - but beyond that it's the shapes. If we get the shapes right, it's a very good house, and, if we don't - even if it's exactly the same matter - it's not a very good house.

The shapes we make determine whether the houses will be very good or not, but the goodness itself is something we also need to define, and that has to do with purpose. I mean, houses are for living in, but what does it mean to live in a house. The more completely we can define that, the better the houses will be. We will be able to create very good house shapes if we thoroughly understand the purposes those houses support. It is, of course, true, that houses support a diversity of purposes. One very good house will support one set of purposes, and another, a rather different set of purposes. Our mission should be to define a spectrum of purpose sets that define the various kinds of houses we will want to build to create a very good city.

I am quite a bit skeptical about the idea that an apartment is a very good house. Thus, certain thinkers have pointed out the deficiencies of suburban houses, or suburban cities, and proposed, in their stead, cities of apartment towers. I don't deny that apartment living can be very good, but I think, as a comprehensive solution to the problem of housing humanity, the apartment tower is a bit of a copout. The thing is, Paolo drew cities that were not collections of apartment towers. We looked at those drawings and saw more than apartments - and, at the same time, more than suburbs - and that is why we were so taken with them. But those drawings were, in a certain sense, quite abstracted, and even Paolo, when he worked to draw more buildable things, quite blithely drew apartment buildings. There I actually fault him, and I think we need to do better.

Actually, when I say that the drawings with which we were so taken were abstracted, as if their characteristic abstraction was a defining feature, I think we might be misreading them. I think this "reality", that those drawings were, for practical reasons, largely abstractions, is actually not a reality, it is a product of our imaginations. Without giving it any thought at all we looked at those drawings and said "they look realistic, but they really can't be realistic. in order to build these things we are going to have to treat them more normally. now we need to adjust these drawings to conform to reality." Even Paolo thought so. We can tell he did because, when he went to actually build something, he made it more normal. I mean, what he built is unusually interesting ... but it's only part of what we saw in the drawings of arcologies. We saw, in those drawings, many, many very interesting houses, and Paolo built some of those, plus we saw what I call superstructure. Actually, we find some of that in what Paolo built, too. What we find is, in what Paolo built, the proportional relationship between these two things, houses and superstructure, is reversed. In the drawings, superstructure is a profoundly dominant feature, and then, if you look closely, there are all the houses, whereas at Arcosanti, and at Cosanti, we see lots of wonderful houses, and then, if we study these places and think about them, we can identify the presence of superstructure.

Superstructure and the goodness of a house are not unrelated. I suspect that, to be truly good, a house needs to be more than a box to hold people, and it's not, either, that it needs to be a fancy box. It needs to be a place. Now, some very good houses - because very good houses do exist - some very good houses are just a box. One box. That's one kind of house - a somewhat rare kind - and it tends to be extremely good. That kind of house is usually quite a large box, with relatively little in it, and the result is the interior becomes a place. That's why it's so effective. Then another kind of very good house could be described as a collection of boxes, with spaces between them. This creates a place, and it is good. A more mediocre kind of house is a collection of boxes without spaces between them. This provides a clue.

Well, these ideas don't answer all our questions, they are just presented as something to think about. One proposal I like to make is to perhaps reverse our thinking about building arcologies. It seems to me we are thinking mostly about building houses, and struggling with the problem of making them resemble what we saw in Paolo's drawings. I suggest we think a lot about how to build superstructure. I propose we build some superstructure, as a first task. The howness of it is like this: you build the superstructure, and then you build houses in it. There is a certain danger, there. If we build superstructure and then just any old house gets built in it, we might end up with something quite miserable. So, I do think it's very important for us to think about the houses, but I certainly think it is very important for us to think about he superstructure too. I personally feel we've drifted away from that, into primarily thinking about houses, and how to build them, and I think that's an imbalance. Superstructure, superstructure, superstructure. In our planning we must fully address that imperative - and the imperative of the house.