I neglected to write to you last spring about the publication of Alastair Gordon’s SPACED OUT, Radical Environments of the Psychedelic Sixties (2008,Rizzoli). It’s this gorgeous coffee table architecture book about the wiggy shelters my friends built back in the day. To us, it’s more like a family album. It’s an absolutely fun read/look.

“If you don’t have recourse to memory or the spaces themselves, Alastair Gordon’s crucial new book, Spaced Out, will bring you closer to a time when architecture was expanding its horizons…Architects today have a lot to learn from these hippies.”– Metropolis (6/18/08)

I was thrilled to have my work included in the book, and curious to see which drawings Alastair would choose include. This color page is from Being of the Sun (Harper & Row, 1972), which I co-wrote with Ramon Sender and illustrated and designed myself. The illustrations on the facing page are from my first book, Living on the Earth (Bookworks, 1970, Random House 1971 and 2000, Gibbs Smith, Publisher, 2003).

Alastair wrote about Living on the Earth with a waggish smile in his voice.

I was honored to be in the august company of environmental-activist designers like the folks at Drop City, an early Colorado artists’ commune, whose geodesic domes made of sheet metal recycled from roofs of cars at the wrecking yard became their signature visual.

I met Paolo Soleri, the architect who designed and is still building Arcosanti, back in the 1960s when he did a fundraising talk and slide show at my mom’s house in L.A. As a result, I wrote about Arcosanti in Living on the Earth.

Here’s an interior photo of Soleri’s semi-subterranean home and studio, Cosanti, in Scottsdale, Arizona.  I made a pilgrimage to both of Soleri's architectural wonders in November 2000, during my epic 8 month book tour for the 30th anniversary edition of Living on the Earth and the release of my first CD, Music From Living on the Earth.

Tags: hippies aliciabaylaurel arcosanti beingofthesun ramonsender paolosoleri dropcity livingontheearth architecture geodesicdome spacedout alastairgordon cosanti