The Cosanti Medal
Promoting progressive environmental actions and ideas is critical if we hope to reverse, or lessen the negative impacts the built environment has had on the future of our global ecosystem. At the Cosanti Foundation, we wish to shed light on leading-edge thinkers and recognize real-world projects that take the philosophy of arcology further by creating a greener, smarter, circular, and more inclusive built environment.
This year, we’re proud to introduce The Cosanti Medal - an award to acknowledge work that raises a more holistic understanding of arcology. It is an initiative of The Cosanti Foundation to express our commitment to the importance of accelerating our world’s transition to a net zero and inclusive future. Through ongoing experimentation with and application of the principles of arcology, the Cosanti Medal will be presented to an individual, firm, or organization that has made a profound contribution to advancing the field, where arcology enriches everyday life.
Who we are
Founded in 1965, The Cosanti Foundation (TCF) is an Arizona-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that seeks to demonstrate a kind of construction and community that offers an alternative to sprawl development and a solution to modern social and environmental crises. The Foundation wishes to acknowledge and celebrate innovators who want to change how the world is designed by building upon and applying our core areas of advocacy that guides our work:


Our vision is to work towards creating a world of equitable communities that improve earth/life balance and do better with less. We pursue this mission and vision at our two demonstration projects, Cosanti (in Paradise Valley near Phoenix) and Arcosanti (near Mayer in central Arizona),
What we do
For the last 60 years, The Cosanti Foundation has developed an extensive set of educational programs that help to increase public understanding of arcology. Through hands-on workshops, lectures, publications, academic partnerships, cultural collaborations, festivals, conferences, and tours of the experimental architecture at both Cosanti and Arcosanti, The Cosanti Foundation has reached millions of people all over the world and continues to reach and teach hundreds of thousands of people every year.
What is Arcology?
A portmanteau of “architecture” and “ecology”, Arcology is a philosophical construct that recognizes the importance of creating architectural design principles for very densely populated and ecologically low-impact human habitats by creating a balance between ecology and architecture. In nature, as organisms evolve, they increase in complexity and become a more compact system. A city should similarly evolve, functioning as a living system. Architecture and ecology as one integral process is capable of demonstrating positive response to the many problems of urban civilization – population growth, pollution, energy/ natural resource depletion, food scarcity, and quality of life. Arcology recognizes the necessity of the radical reorganization of the sprawling urban landscape into dense, integrated, three-dimensional cities in order to support the diversified activities that sustain human culture and environmental balance.
See link: https://www.arcosanti.org/arcology/#lean
Schedule
Jury AnnouncedNovember 22, 2022
Nomination DeadlineFebruary 22, 2023
The Cosanti Medal AnnouncedMarch 18, 2023
Any questions, please email
[email protected]