Biosphere Two

[30ashopper]

BLDGBLOG: Remnants of the Biosphere

A beautiful series of photos documenting the decrepit state of Biosphere 2, a semi-derelict bio-architectural experiment in the Arizona desert.

The largest sealed environment ever created, constructed at a cost of $200 million, and now falling somewhere between David Gissen's idea of subnature—wherein the slow power of vegetative life is unleashed "as a transgressive animated force against buildings"—and a bioclimatically inspired Dubai, Biosphere 2 even included its own one million-gallon artificial sea.

"The structure was billed as the first large habitat for humans that would live and breathe on its own, as cut off from the earth as a spaceship," the New York Times wrote back in 1992, but the project was a near-instant failure.

Watching something originally built precisely as a simulation of the Earth—the 2 in "Biosphere 2" is meant to differentiate this place from the Earth itself, i.e. Biosphere 1—slowly taken over by the very forces it was naively meant to model is philosophically extraordinary: the model taken over by the thing it represents. It is a replicant in its dying throes.

Can't think of anything really to say, just found this interesting. I'd love to take a visit, seems like it would be like visiting an ancient ruin of a dead society.

Here's the orginal web site on the project:

Biosphere 2 - Where science lives.

 

[John R]

Thanks for that. I haven't been to bldgblog in ages. up on my favorites bar now.

this part is pretty scary: ...now within the reach of a building boom streaking north from Tucson and south from Phoenix (and which some demographers say will eventually join the two cities, once 100 miles apart)."

 

[poppy]

This is how the plants around my pool are going to look after this dang freeze.

 

[sunspotbaby]

Anyone read the comments of Wes Shull after the article? Maybe it's not as bad as portrayed.

 

[Chandra]

That was the last I heard about the project, the University purchased it to use for research.

I believe this is was one of the places where John Jeaven's Grow Biointensive gardening method was really put to the test and a lot was gleaned from that experiment.

They discovered that one person could potentially grow over 80% of their own food for a year in just a few thousand square feet. It currently takes over 1.4 acres annually, using convential agricultural methods, to feed each person in the US.