Projects in Decay
08 January 2010 | By admin in Environment, Photos, Web
For more pics and info: BLDG BLOG
“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.”
08 January 2010 | Samantha Said:
Wow… I was JUST thinking about this place and wondering what happened to it- and Voilå Le c’est ici ! on your website.
I think what inspired my recollection of the biosphere was musing about the oxymoron of the century, “reality TV”. Seems like I remember the biosphere setting itself up to be an ongoing media curiosity, (I specifically remember an interview with one of the “scientists” before sealing himself in where the reporter asked about romance and they scientist feigned embarrassment- sex sells, or it tried, anyway) but then it leaked out that it was a bit of a hoax and the biosphere was washed up. People lost interest of faith or both. I think TV producers learned their lesson and figured out that letting Survivor be acceptably fake ironically preserves its integrity- whereas the biosphere tried to be real science. Oops.
01 March 2010 | Eric Said:
They restored this place a bit and charge you to get in. It’s kind of expensive – $20/adult or $18 with AAA. Skip it an hike in the Catalina Mountains around it for free.