Praising Arizona
Matthew BuckLand of heat and dust
While hippies and spiritualists flock to mainline its energy, dreamers and schemers swarm to the desert state to build concrete utopias. Mick Brown explores a curious land of heat and dust where there are visions aplenty.
When the architectural visionary Frank Lloyd Wright arrived in Scottsdale in 1937 to break ground on what would become his winter retreat and one of his greatest masterpieces, Taliesin West (00 1 480 860 2700; www.franklloydwright.org), the population of the town was just 215. He was recuperating from pneumonia, and had been searching for a warm haven away from his home in Wisconsin during the cold winter months. A charismatic man, Wright was a vividly dandified figure, an extravagant collector of Oriental art and expensive automobiles. He was also a monumental egotist who declared that early in life he had chosen honest arrogance over hypocritical humility, 'and seen no occasion to change'.
He purchased a parcel of land in the foothills of the McDowell Mountains, a harsh environment of sunburnt rocks scattered on the desert floor, with outcrops of cacti and mesquite, and constructed a series of buildings in his characteristic ground-hugging, horizontal, Prairie School style. They followed what Wright called 'the organic commandment', with walls that looked as if they had grown from the rough desert floor, and a superstructure fashioned from redwood posts and rafters with adjustable canvas blinds, honouring his philosophy of opening the space to nature. On its completion, he described Taliesin as belonging to the Arizona desert 'as though it had stood there during Creation'. Taliesin West was, in fact, a school as much as a home. The property was built by Wright's apprentices, in a form of indentured servitude; they were expected to labour, cook, clean and pay tuition fees in return for the privilege of sitting at the feet of the master.
Pictured: The Chapel of the Holy Cross outside Sedona
Matthew BuckScottsdale
The desert, of course, has always been a place for visionaries, and where Wright lorded over his imperial kibbutz, others followed, some to craft concrete dreams of utopia out of the desert scrub, others to stare into the abyss, hoping against hope that more than the abyss would stare back.
But if deserts are places where the spirit is purified by nature's beauty and stiffened by hardship, Scottsdale the city is somewhat more prosaic. Cheek by jowl with the state capital, Phoenix, it is a quiet, low-key kind of place, with a disproportionate number of hotels and more destination spas per head than anywhere else in the USA.
The Sanctuary on Camelback Mountain (00 1 480 948 2100; www.sanctuaryoncamelback.com; doubles from $259) is probably the most indulgent place to stay, with spectacular views over Paradise Valley and casitas with outdoor hot tubs and wood-burning fireplaces.
Scottsdale is often ranked as one of the most livable US cities, and indeed, when driving out of town, passing the gated entrances of private houses, it does seem like a muted version of Beverly Hills. At high noon, the streets downtown are somnolent and almost eerily clean: I wasn't surprised to read of a local golf tournament called the 'Waste Management Phoenix Open'.
Pictured: the spa at Sanctuary on Camelback Mountain
Matthew BuckScottsdale's hotels and restaurants
An unmissable restaurant is The Mission (00 1 480 636 5005; www.themissionaz.com; about $90 for a three-course dinner for two, without drinks), a former plumber's supply store transformed into a funky space with exposed venting ducts and ornate glass chandeliers. The guacamole is prepared to taste at your table, the black cod sits on a bed of charred leek, basmati rice and aji rocoto pepper, and there's an amazing pudding of pumpkin bread, Scotch, pepitas and pomegranate.
I stayed at the Hotel Valley Ho (00 1 480 248 2000; www.hotelvalleyho.com; doubles from $114). Its balcony is the perfect place to soak up the view of Scottsdale's low-rise buildings and palm trees spreading out towards a hazy range of mountains. Indirectly, Frank Lloyd Wright was responsible for this outlook: one of his students, Edward L Varney, designed the hotel - hailed for its modern design when it opened in 1956, a favourite retreat for Hollywood stars including Bing Crosby and Marilyn Monroe, and an exciting exemplar of mid-century-modern hotel design.
But historically, the Valley Ho is more important than that. It was the first hotel in town to incorporate an innovation that would be crucial to the development of Scottsdale as a honey-trap in a region where average summer temperatures can exceed 100°F: it had air conditioning. The hotel is also a springboard from which to dive into the realm of experimental architects, installation artists, alien theorists and new-age, crystal-gazing creatures who emerge from behind Arizona's huge, red-rock, movie-brilliant vistas.
Matthew BuckArchitecture in Scottsdale
One such character is Paolo Soleri. Another former apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright, Soleri inherited the mantle of Scottsdale's most celebrated architect and its most determined visionary. In 2010 he unveiled one of the most staggering pieces of architecture in Scottsdale, its steel bridge. But for more than half a century, he has been engaged in an even more outlandish experiment in the field of urbanism: the creation of a desert city called Arcosanti (00 1 928 632 6212; www.arcosanti.org).
Before visiting the project itself, I met Soleri at the studio in Scottsdale where he has lived for 57 years. A small, sharp-eyed burnt raisin of a man at 91, his manner was both beatific and mischievous. He'd come to the USA in 1947 as a young architect to study with his hero, but returned to Italy after 18 months. In 1956 he was back, paying $12,000 for five acres in Paradise Valley on the edge of Scottsdale. Here he built Cosanti, his studio and home, which served as a cradle for his vision of 'arcology', a fusion of architecture and ecology. Using the technique of 'earthcasting', Soleri built a series of extraordinary, dome-like structures; step inside any of them, with their organic shapes and decorative surfaces, and it's like walking into a psychedelic mushroom.
Pictured: an earthcast concrete dome at Arcosanti
Matthew BuckThe Arcosanti Sky Suite, Arizona
In Arcology: The City in the Image of Man, published in 1969, Soleri outlined his philosophy of the city as a high-density 'hyper-organism', comprised of soaring 'hyper-buildings' housing up to 100,000 people and incorporating hotels, businesses, hospitals and even greenhouses. 'People move to the suburbs to be close to nature, and in doing so, they destroy the thing they have moved to be close to,' Soleri told me. 'I have always worked against the grain of the American Dream.' In 1970, on a 15-acre desert site he bought 70 miles north of Phoenix, he began to build.
Soleri loathes the word 'utopian'. 'Leave immediately!' he joked when I mentioned it. His approach is wholly practical, homing in on America's 'hyper-consumerism' - the dependence on finite sources of energy, which he believes will be the death of society.
Pictured: view from Arcosanti's Sky Suite
Matthew BuckArcosanti eco city
The original Arcosanti plan envisaged a city of 5,000 residents. In the 1970s volunteers flocked to the project, happy to work for nothing to help bring Soleri's ideas to fruition. But progress has been glacial, as I discovered on reaching the site at the end of a bumpy, two-mile track. 'Concrete is expensive,' Soleri said. He has resisted commercial support: 'These things suffocate you and come to own you.' The principal source of funding is the sale of wind chimes he has designed, which can cost up to $13,000.
Today, the population is around 80, mostly architectural students who come from all over the world to study design, earthcasting, climatology and geology. Walking among olive and cypress trees on the footpaths that link the buildings conjures up a futuristic Tuscan hill town. There is a Sky Theater where one can watch the stars. Hyper-consumerism isn't a problem here; there are no shops.
Pictured: volunteers creating bronze wind chimes at Arcosanti
Matthew BuckSedona
From Arcosanti's earthcast domes of concrete, I took the road north towards Sedona, passing the striking Catholic Chapel of the Holy Cross on the way into town. For anyone in search of heaven on earth, Sedona is the place to go. Famous for its towering limestone cliffs and rock layers of vivid crimson, the region attracts more than four million visitors a year, making it second only to the Grand Canyon as Arizona's most visited destination.
It would be hard to think of a more beautifully located hotel than Enchantment Resort and Mii amo spa (00 1 928 282 2900; www.enchantmentresort.com; doubles from $376). Manhattanites swarm here when winter closes in; it has Arizona's best-looking spa, an incredibly sleek pool and delicious, Southwestern-influenced food (such as Kobe beef burgers and smoked chicken enchiladas).
The whole of Sedona is an enchanted kingdom, with blood-red rocks looming against blue skies, the afternoon sunlight casting myriad shadows across their surface. It is breathtakingly, ravishingly beautiful. In recent years, perhaps because of this seemingly absurd loveliness, it has become, more bizarrely, the new-age capital of the USA, a magnet for spiritual seekers drawn by the so-called 'vortex sites', said to be repositories of a spiritually uplifting energy.
Pictured: the pool at Enchantment Resort
Matthew BuckSedona spiritualism
In 1981 a local psychic named Paige Bryant said that she had channelled information from etheric realms telling her that Sedona was the 'heart chakra' of planet Earth. She pinpointed her first vortex at a location where she determined that this 'Earth energy' was most powerful. Six years later, 5,000 people descended on the city to celebrate a time of Harmonic Convergence. At Bell Rock, people paid $75 to watch the mountain ascend to the Andromeda galaxy.
The fact that the mountain remained in place did not dissuade the faithful. A study by Northern Arizona University in 1996 found that 64 per cent of Sedona's visitors come in search of a 'spiritual experience'. In town, there are premises whose signs advertise psychic and tarot readings, angelology and crystals.
In a new-age shop called Crystal Castle I bought a copy of the Sedona Journal of Emergence and sat down outside to read about a man called Lee Carroll who had been channelling messages from 'Kryon of Magnetic Service'. I was joined by two men, of a breed far rarer here than psychics: Sedona natives. We fell into conversation about the vortexes, one of them, Barry, struggling to keep his scepticism at bay. He couldn't deny that the new-agers were good for business: he had made his own contribution to the local economy by writing a book, Hey! What's the Name of that Rock?, a dictionary of the area's rock formations. Some names were long-established; others, he confessed, were made up.
Pictured: alien jukebox at the Red Planet Diner in Sedona
Matthew BuckSecret Mountain Wilderness
Serendipitously, my hotel was located at the mouth of Boynton Canyon in the shadow of a powerful vortex site, a jagged tower of rock known as Kachina Woman. The name, Barry had told me, was a corruption of the Hopi word katsina, meaning 'spirit'. I set off up the canyon the following day. A wooden noticeboard informed me I was entering the Secret Mountain Wilderness. I followed the path up the mountainside, the earth spotted with thickets of juniper trees. A sightseeing helicopter fluttered across the sky, the drumming of its rotor blades echoing down the canyon, and giving way to the gentle sigh of the wind as it passed out of earshot.
The path petered out as I clambered upwards and came to stand, at last, at the foot of Kachina Woman. Close up, her sharp edges seemed to take on a softer, feminine aspect; she appeared to be cradling three papooses across her stomach. I sat down and looked across the valley towards a range of crimson mesas. I seemed to have the mountainside to myself.
But what was this? I could hear the faint strains of music that sounded like an Indian flute. I couldn't see anyone. Was I imagining things or was music piped from the rocks to add to the atmosphere? A hiker came over the crest, scrambling towards me. 'Did you hear flute music?' I asked him keenly. 'Did you hear it?' I repeated. I explained about the vortex energy that was supposed to flow around the area - its magnetic pull, its life-enhancing qualities.
He shot me an odd look and moved on.
Pictured: night sky in the Arizona desert
Matthew BuckGetting to Arizona
GETTING TO ARIZONA
Kuoni (01306 747008; www.kuoni.co.uk) offers tailor-made fly/drive holidays in the USA. A seven-night trip to Phoenix, including return flights with
British Airways from Heathrow, plus Alamo car hire, costs from £961 per person, based on two people sharing.
By Mick Brown. Published in September 2012 Condé* Nast Traveller.*