#OUTDOORS...INDOORS

[tameblog]

The premise of the critically panned 1996 film Bio-Dome is closer to our reality than I’d like to admit. In it, the planet has become so polluted it’s rapidly becoming unsuitable for human life. (Sound familiar?) With the backing of a powerful investor, a group of environmental scientists seal themselves in an enormous enclosed terrarium for a year as part of a climate experiment. In true ’90s slacker comedy fashion, the two stoner protagonists accidentally get themselves locked inside the Bio-Dome, and, of course, wreak havoc. Though the film’s plot is fictional, its premise is loosely based on the real-life Biosphere 2, a $150-million hermetically sealed environmental system in Oracle, Arizona, with wilderness biomes including a rainforest, desert, grassy savannah, mangrove wetlands, and a 25-foot-deep ocean with a coral reef, in which eight researchers actually lived between 1991 and 1993. The experiment famously ended in disaster when rising carbon dioxide levels and crop failure threatened the participants’ lives. While geodesic domes with controlled environments designed to replicate Earth’s ecosystems seemed eccentric in the early 1990s, when climate change was just starting to enter the mainstream discourse, in the decades since, multimillion- or billion-dollar developments that bring the natural world—or simulations of it—inside have become increasingly common. In some cases, like with "the world’s largest indoor desert" in Omaha, Nebraska, or Montreal’s Biosphère (housed in the Expo 67 geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller), these attractions are centered around education and research. Then, there’s a slightly different iteration developed purely for recreation. As global temperatures rise and "unprecedented weather events" occur with increasing regularity, there might be a future where more of our outdoor recreation will be relegated to indoor simulations. In some ways, these built environments are case studies for how successfully (or unsuccessfully) natural environments can be replicated to facilitate the human pastimes—like surfing or skiing, even hiking—that rely on them. The indoor "beach" at the New Century Global Center in Chengdu—one of China’s most polluted cities—is illuminated by an artificial sun.Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Group’s Seagaia Ocean Dome was an early example of the over-the-top-faux-natural-environment-as-amusement-park phenomenon. Opened in 1993, the $1.8 billion facility, which was situated less than .2 miles from an actual beach in the coastal city of Miyazaki, Japan, was a Polynesia-themed marvel with a 129,166-square-foot man-made beach with sand from crushed marble and a wave machine capable of 200 surfable variations (in unsalted, chlorinated water). It closed in 2007, faltering under steep ticket prices and operational costs, but that wasn’t the end of the road for artificial beaches. There’s one at the colossal New Century Global Center in Chengdu, China, with space for more than 6,000 beachgoers to lounge under its fake sun. At Berlin’s Tropical Islands, which is housed in a 1938 airfield hangar, a massive screen with a photo of a blue sky hovers above a "sea" made up by three Olympic-size swimming pools. The indoor air temperature is kept in the high seventies. On the other end of the weather spectrum, there are indoor ski resorts like Ski Dubai, a 242,000-square-foot "snow park" in the Mall of the Emirates, where 30 to 40 tons of new snow are produced nightly to blanket five imitation ski slopes, or Big Snow American Dream, North America’s only indoor ski resort, in New Jersey. Ironically, the environmental impact of many of these climate-controlled facilities is significant; a 2013 report, for example, estimated that Ski Dubai’s annual greenhouse gas emissions equate to 900 annual round-trip flights from Dubai to Munich. Massive developments like Ski Dubai or Paradise Island Water Park that simulate natural environments in contained spaces pump tons of carbon into the atmosphere, only exacerbating the factors that increasingly threaten those places and make their conditions more hostile. Ski Dubai’s artificial snow is produced similarly to how faux snow is made at outdoor ski resorts.Christiana Moss of Studio Ma, an award-winning architecture and environmental design studio in Phoenix, Arizona, has some ideas about the way we should be approaching buildings that bring the outdoors indoors. As temperatures increase, especially in places like Phoenix, Moss believes more structures need to be suited to not only controlling contrasting indoor climates, but tempering them with the heat outside. "Increasingly, the realm of what you would consider indoors and what we consider outdoors needs to be expanded and blended to temper exterior temperatures," she says. "It’s about the layers of interior and exterior space.... It’s a huge opportunity for really rethinking and redesigning what we consider to be indoors and outdoors, what we consider to be responsible cities, and how we think about access to shade in daylight." The 3.14-acre Biosphere 2 laboratory includes "active research systems" such as ocean and desert environments and a rainforest ecosystem (pictured).Another major factor to consider is the growing body of research supporting the benefits of access to nature on physical and mental health. "In Eastern megacities, an indoor/outdoor environment is an easier way to access ‘natural’ space," says space architect Vittorio Netti, who works as a professor at University of Houston and also as an aerospace engineer at Axiom Space, referring to how for someone living in a cramped megacity, indoor "beaches" with real sand or enclosed "forests" with actual flora can provide easier access to elements of the natural world.Netti, who has spent significant time testing out simulated spaces for his work, believes that future luxury and quality of life will be defined by access to natural spaces. He stresses there are two overlooked areas in considering the design of enclosed "nature" simulations for humans: circadian rhythm and smell. To be truly convincing, faux natural environments should incorporate changes in light and darkness over a roughly 24-hour cycle. And they shouldn’t be sterile.The original Biosphere 2 experiment failed colossally when carbon dioxide levels in the self-contained bubble rose 10 times the normal atmospheric amount, making the enclosed ecosystem uninhabitable. In 2021, a Scientific American article that referred to the live-in terrarium as "effectively like a time machine that can preview a climate-altered Earth" detailed how, after a few decades and some significant retooling, the facility is finally living up to its potential as a site for important climate research. But the focus of its experiments are now centered on narrower questions about our real planet, rather than a man-made re-creation. According to astrobiologist Jacob Haqq Misra, who studies planet habitability and authored the book Sovereign Mars: Transforming Our Values Through Space Settlement, a dystopian vision of a future reliant on sealed ecosystems for "outdoor" recreation is more something of the public imagination than a prediction from actual experts. "The good news is, it would take a lot to make planet Earth uninhabitable," says Misra. Source link

[ramestoryworld]

The premise of the critically panned 1996 film Bio-Dome is closer to our reality than I’d like to admit. In it, the planet has become so polluted it’s rapidly becoming unsuitable for human life. (Sound familiar?) With the backing of a powerful investor, a group of environmental scientists seal themselves in an enormous enclosed terrarium for a year as part of a climate experiment. In true ’90s slacker comedy fashion, the two stoner protagonists accidentally get themselves locked inside the Bio-Dome, and, of course, wreak havoc. Though the film’s plot is fictional, its premise is loosely based on the real-life Biosphere 2, a $150-million hermetically sealed environmental system in Oracle, Arizona, with wilderness biomes including a rainforest, desert, grassy savannah, mangrove wetlands, and a 25-foot-deep ocean with a coral reef, in which eight researchers actually lived between 1991 and 1993. The experiment famously ended in disaster when rising carbon dioxide levels and crop failure threatened the participants’ lives. While geodesic domes with controlled environments designed to replicate Earth’s ecosystems seemed eccentric in the early 1990s, when climate change was just starting to enter the mainstream discourse, in the decades since, multimillion- or billion-dollar developments that bring the natural world—or simulations of it—inside have become increasingly common. In some cases, like with "the world’s largest indoor desert" in Omaha, Nebraska, or Montreal’s Biosphère (housed in the Expo 67 geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller), these attractions are centered around education and research. Then, there’s a slightly different iteration developed purely for recreation. As global temperatures rise and "unprecedented weather events" occur with increasing regularity, there might be a future where more of our outdoor recreation will be relegated to indoor simulations. In some ways, these built environments are case studies for how successfully (or unsuccessfully) natural environments can be replicated to facilitate the human pastimes—like surfing or skiing, even hiking—that rely on them. The indoor "beach" at the New Century Global Center in Chengdu—one of China’s most polluted cities—is illuminated by an artificial sun.Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Group’s Seagaia Ocean Dome was an early example of the over-the-top-faux-natural-environment-as-amusement-park phenomenon. Opened in 1993, the $1.8 billion facility, which was situated less than .2 miles from an actual beach in the coastal city of Miyazaki, Japan, was a Polynesia-themed marvel with a 129,166-square-foot man-made beach with sand from crushed marble and a wave machine capable of 200 surfable variations (in unsalted, chlorinated water). It closed in 2007, faltering under steep ticket prices and operational costs, but that wasn’t the end of the road for artificial beaches. There’s one at the colossal New Century Global Center in Chengdu, China, with space for more than 6,000 beachgoers to lounge under its fake sun. At Berlin’s Tropical Islands, which is housed in a 1938 airfield hangar, a massive screen with a photo of a blue sky hovers above a "sea" made up by three Olympic-size swimming pools. The indoor air temperature is kept in the high seventies. On the other end of the weather spectrum, there are indoor ski resorts like Ski Dubai, a 242,000-square-foot "snow park" in the Mall of the Emirates, where 30 to 40 tons of new snow are produced nightly to blanket five imitation ski slopes, or Big Snow American Dream, North America’s only indoor ski resort, in New Jersey. Ironically, the environmental impact of many of these climate-controlled facilities is significant; a 2013 report, for example, estimated that Ski Dubai’s annual greenhouse gas emissions equate to 900 annual round-trip flights from Dubai to Munich. Massive developments like Ski Dubai or Paradise Island Water Park that simulate natural environments in contained spaces pump tons of carbon into the atmosphere, only exacerbating the factors that increasingly threaten those places and make their conditions more hostile. Ski Dubai’s artificial snow is produced similarly to how faux snow is made at outdoor ski resorts.Christiana Moss of Studio Ma, an award-winning architecture and environmental design studio in Phoenix, Arizona, has some ideas about the way we should be approaching buildings that bring the outdoors indoors. As temperatures increase, especially in places like Phoenix, Moss believes more structures need to be suited to not only controlling contrasting indoor climates, but tempering them with the heat outside. "Increasingly, the realm of what you would consider indoors and what we consider outdoors needs to be expanded and blended to temper exterior temperatures," she says. "It’s about the layers of interior and exterior space.... It’s a huge opportunity for really rethinking and redesigning what we consider to be indoors and outdoors, what we consider to be responsible cities, and how we think about access to shade in daylight." The 3.14-acre Biosphere 2 laboratory includes "active research systems" such as ocean and desert environments and a rainforest ecosystem (pictured).Another major factor to consider is the growing body of research supporting the benefits of access to nature on physical and mental health. "In Eastern megacities, an indoor/outdoor environment is an easier way to access ‘natural’ space," says space architect Vittorio Netti, who works as a professor at University of Houston and also as an aerospace engineer at Axiom Space, referring to how for someone living in a cramped megacity, indoor "beaches" with real sand or enclosed "forests" with actual flora can provide easier access to elements of the natural world.Netti, who has spent significant time testing out simulated spaces for his work, believes that future luxury and quality of life will be defined by access to natural spaces. He stresses there are two overlooked areas in considering the design of enclosed "nature" simulations for humans: circadian rhythm and smell. To be truly convincing, faux natural environments should incorporate changes in light and darkness over a roughly 24-hour cycle. And they shouldn’t be sterile.The original Biosphere 2 experiment failed colossally when carbon dioxide levels in the self-contained bubble rose 10 times the normal atmospheric amount, making the enclosed ecosystem uninhabitable. In 2021, a Scientific American article that referred to the live-in terrarium as "effectively like a time machine that can preview a climate-altered Earth" detailed how, after a few decades and some significant retooling, the facility is finally living up to its potential as a site for important climate research. But the focus of its experiments are now centered on narrower questions about our real planet, rather than a man-made re-creation. According to astrobiologist Jacob Haqq Misra, who studies planet habitability and authored the book Sovereign Mars: Transforming Our Values Through Space Settlement, a dystopian vision of a future reliant on sealed ecosystems for "outdoor" recreation is more something of the public imagination than a prediction from actual experts. "The good news is, it would take a lot to make planet Earth uninhabitable," says Misra. Source link

[alexha2210]

The premise of the critically panned 1996 film Bio-Dome is closer to our reality than I’d like to admit. In it, the planet has become so polluted it’s rapidly becoming unsuitable for human life. (Sound familiar?) With the backing of a powerful investor, a group of environmental scientists seal themselves in an enormous enclosed terrarium for a year as part of a climate experiment. In true ’90s slacker comedy fashion, the two stoner protagonists accidentally get themselves locked inside the Bio-Dome, and, of course, wreak havoc. Though the film’s plot is fictional, its premise is loosely based on the real-life Biosphere 2, a $150-million hermetically sealed environmental system in Oracle, Arizona, with wilderness biomes including a rainforest, desert, grassy savannah, mangrove wetlands, and a 25-foot-deep ocean with a coral reef, in which eight researchers actually lived between 1991 and 1993. The experiment famously ended in disaster when rising carbon dioxide levels and crop failure threatened the participants’ lives. While geodesic domes with controlled environments designed to replicate Earth’s ecosystems seemed eccentric in the early 1990s, when climate change was just starting to enter the mainstream discourse, in the decades since, multimillion- or billion-dollar developments that bring the natural world—or simulations of it—inside have become increasingly common. In some cases, like with "the world’s largest indoor desert" in Omaha, Nebraska, or Montreal’s Biosphère (housed in the Expo 67 geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller), these attractions are centered around education and research. Then, there’s a slightly different iteration developed purely for recreation. As global temperatures rise and "unprecedented weather events" occur with increasing regularity, there might be a future where more of our outdoor recreation will be relegated to indoor simulations. In some ways, these built environments are case studies for how successfully (or unsuccessfully) natural environments can be replicated to facilitate the human pastimes—like surfing or skiing, even hiking—that rely on them. The indoor "beach" at the New Century Global Center in Chengdu—one of China’s most polluted cities—is illuminated by an artificial sun.Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Group’s Seagaia Ocean Dome was an early example of the over-the-top-faux-natural-environment-as-amusement-park phenomenon. Opened in 1993, the $1.8 billion facility, which was situated less than .2 miles from an actual beach in the coastal city of Miyazaki, Japan, was a Polynesia-themed marvel with a 129,166-square-foot man-made beach with sand from crushed marble and a wave machine capable of 200 surfable variations (in unsalted, chlorinated water). It closed in 2007, faltering under steep ticket prices and operational costs, but that wasn’t the end of the road for artificial beaches. There’s one at the colossal New Century Global Center in Chengdu, China, with space for more than 6,000 beachgoers to lounge under its fake sun. At Berlin’s Tropical Islands, which is housed in a 1938 airfield hangar, a massive screen with a photo of a blue sky hovers above a "sea" made up by three Olympic-size swimming pools. The indoor air temperature is kept in the high seventies. On the other end of the weather spectrum, there are indoor ski resorts like Ski Dubai, a 242,000-square-foot "snow park" in the Mall of the Emirates, where 30 to 40 tons of new snow are produced nightly to blanket five imitation ski slopes, or Big Snow American Dream, North America’s only indoor ski resort, in New Jersey. Ironically, the environmental impact of many of these climate-controlled facilities is significant; a 2013 report, for example, estimated that Ski Dubai’s annual greenhouse gas emissions equate to 900 annual round-trip flights from Dubai to Munich. Massive developments like Ski Dubai or Paradise Island Water Park that simulate natural environments in contained spaces pump tons of carbon into the atmosphere, only exacerbating the factors that increasingly threaten those places and make their conditions more hostile. Ski Dubai’s artificial snow is produced similarly to how faux snow is made at outdoor ski resorts.Christiana Moss of Studio Ma, an award-winning architecture and environmental design studio in Phoenix, Arizona, has some ideas about the way we should be approaching buildings that bring the outdoors indoors. As temperatures increase, especially in places like Phoenix, Moss believes more structures need to be suited to not only controlling contrasting indoor climates, but tempering them with the heat outside. "Increasingly, the realm of what you would consider indoors and what we consider outdoors needs to be expanded and blended to temper exterior temperatures," she says. "It’s about the layers of interior and exterior space.... It’s a huge opportunity for really rethinking and redesigning what we consider to be indoors and outdoors, what we consider to be responsible cities, and how we think about access to shade in daylight." The 3.14-acre Biosphere 2 laboratory includes "active research systems" such as ocean and desert environments and a rainforest ecosystem (pictured).Another major factor to consider is the growing body of research supporting the benefits of access to nature on physical and mental health. "In Eastern megacities, an indoor/outdoor environment is an easier way to access ‘natural’ space," says space architect Vittorio Netti, who works as a professor at University of Houston and also as an aerospace engineer at Axiom Space, referring to how for someone living in a cramped megacity, indoor "beaches" with real sand or enclosed "forests" with actual flora can provide easier access to elements of the natural world.Netti, who has spent significant time testing out simulated spaces for his work, believes that future luxury and quality of life will be defined by access to natural spaces. He stresses there are two overlooked areas in considering the design of enclosed "nature" simulations for humans: circadian rhythm and smell. To be truly convincing, faux natural environments should incorporate changes in light and darkness over a roughly 24-hour cycle. And they shouldn’t be sterile.The original Biosphere 2 experiment failed colossally when carbon dioxide levels in the self-contained bubble rose 10 times the normal atmospheric amount, making the enclosed ecosystem uninhabitable. In 2021, a Scientific American article that referred to the live-in terrarium as "effectively like a time machine that can preview a climate-altered Earth" detailed how, after a few decades and some significant retooling, the facility is finally living up to its potential as a site for important climate research. But the focus of its experiments are now centered on narrower questions about our real planet, rather than a man-made re-creation. According to astrobiologist Jacob Haqq Misra, who studies planet habitability and authored the book Sovereign Mars: Transforming Our Values Through Space Settlement, a dystopian vision of a future reliant on sealed ecosystems for "outdoor" recreation is more something of the public imagination than a prediction from actual experts. "The good news is, it would take a lot to make planet Earth uninhabitable," says Misra. Source link

[angusstory]

The premise of the critically panned 1996 film Bio-Dome is closer to our reality than I’d like to admit. In it, the planet has become so polluted it’s rapidly becoming unsuitable for human life. (Sound familiar?) With the backing of a powerful investor, a group of environmental scientists seal themselves in an enormous enclosed terrarium for a year as part of a climate experiment. In true ’90s slacker comedy fashion, the two stoner protagonists accidentally get themselves locked inside the Bio-Dome, and, of course, wreak havoc. Though the film’s plot is fictional, its premise is loosely based on the real-life Biosphere 2, a $150-million hermetically sealed environmental system in Oracle, Arizona, with wilderness biomes including a rainforest, desert, grassy savannah, mangrove wetlands, and a 25-foot-deep ocean with a coral reef, in which eight researchers actually lived between 1991 and 1993. The experiment famously ended in disaster when rising carbon dioxide levels and crop failure threatened the participants’ lives. While geodesic domes with controlled environments designed to replicate Earth’s ecosystems seemed eccentric in the early 1990s, when climate change was just starting to enter the mainstream discourse, in the decades since, multimillion- or billion-dollar developments that bring the natural world—or simulations of it—inside have become increasingly common. In some cases, like with "the world’s largest indoor desert" in Omaha, Nebraska, or Montreal’s Biosphère (housed in the Expo 67 geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller), these attractions are centered around education and research. Then, there’s a slightly different iteration developed purely for recreation. As global temperatures rise and "unprecedented weather events" occur with increasing regularity, there might be a future where more of our outdoor recreation will be relegated to indoor simulations. In some ways, these built environments are case studies for how successfully (or unsuccessfully) natural environments can be replicated to facilitate the human pastimes—like surfing or skiing, even hiking—that rely on them. The indoor "beach" at the New Century Global Center in Chengdu—one of China’s most polluted cities—is illuminated by an artificial sun.Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Group’s Seagaia Ocean Dome was an early example of the over-the-top-faux-natural-environment-as-amusement-park phenomenon. Opened in 1993, the $1.8 billion facility, which was situated less than .2 miles from an actual beach in the coastal city of Miyazaki, Japan, was a Polynesia-themed marvel with a 129,166-square-foot man-made beach with sand from crushed marble and a wave machine capable of 200 surfable variations (in unsalted, chlorinated water). It closed in 2007, faltering under steep ticket prices and operational costs, but that wasn’t the end of the road for artificial beaches. There’s one at the colossal New Century Global Center in Chengdu, China, with space for more than 6,000 beachgoers to lounge under its fake sun. At Berlin’s Tropical Islands, which is housed in a 1938 airfield hangar, a massive screen with a photo of a blue sky hovers above a "sea" made up by three Olympic-size swimming pools. The indoor air temperature is kept in the high seventies. On the other end of the weather spectrum, there are indoor ski resorts like Ski Dubai, a 242,000-square-foot "snow park" in the Mall of the Emirates, where 30 to 40 tons of new snow are produced nightly to blanket five imitation ski slopes, or Big Snow American Dream, North America’s only indoor ski resort, in New Jersey. Ironically, the environmental impact of many of these climate-controlled facilities is significant; a 2013 report, for example, estimated that Ski Dubai’s annual greenhouse gas emissions equate to 900 annual round-trip flights from Dubai to Munich. Massive developments like Ski Dubai or Paradise Island Water Park that simulate natural environments in contained spaces pump tons of carbon into the atmosphere, only exacerbating the factors that increasingly threaten those places and make their conditions more hostile. Ski Dubai’s artificial snow is produced similarly to how faux snow is made at outdoor ski resorts.Christiana Moss of Studio Ma, an award-winning architecture and environmental design studio in Phoenix, Arizona, has some ideas about the way we should be approaching buildings that bring the outdoors indoors. As temperatures increase, especially in places like Phoenix, Moss believes more structures need to be suited to not only controlling contrasting indoor climates, but tempering them with the heat outside. "Increasingly, the realm of what you would consider indoors and what we consider outdoors needs to be expanded and blended to temper exterior temperatures," she says. "It’s about the layers of interior and exterior space.... It’s a huge opportunity for really rethinking and redesigning what we consider to be indoors and outdoors, what we consider to be responsible cities, and how we think about access to shade in daylight." The 3.14-acre Biosphere 2 laboratory includes "active research systems" such as ocean and desert environments and a rainforest ecosystem (pictured).Another major factor to consider is the growing body of research supporting the benefits of access to nature on physical and mental health. "In Eastern megacities, an indoor/outdoor environment is an easier way to access ‘natural’ space," says space architect Vittorio Netti, who works as a professor at University of Houston and also as an aerospace engineer at Axiom Space, referring to how for someone living in a cramped megacity, indoor "beaches" with real sand or enclosed "forests" with actual flora can provide easier access to elements of the natural world.Netti, who has spent significant time testing out simulated spaces for his work, believes that future luxury and quality of life will be defined by access to natural spaces. He stresses there are two overlooked areas in considering the design of enclosed "nature" simulations for humans: circadian rhythm and smell. To be truly convincing, faux natural environments should incorporate changes in light and darkness over a roughly 24-hour cycle. And they shouldn’t be sterile.The original Biosphere 2 experiment failed colossally when carbon dioxide levels in the self-contained bubble rose 10 times the normal atmospheric amount, making the enclosed ecosystem uninhabitable. In 2021, a Scientific American article that referred to the live-in terrarium as "effectively like a time machine that can preview a climate-altered Earth" detailed how, after a few decades and some significant retooling, the facility is finally living up to its potential as a site for important climate research. But the focus of its experiments are now centered on narrower questions about our real planet, rather than a man-made re-creation. According to astrobiologist Jacob Haqq Misra, who studies planet habitability and authored the book Sovereign Mars: Transforming Our Values Through Space Settlement, a dystopian vision of a future reliant on sealed ecosystems for "outdoor" recreation is more something of the public imagination than a prediction from actual experts. "The good news is, it would take a lot to make planet Earth uninhabitable," says Misra. Source link

[tumibaba]

The premise of the critically panned 1996 film Bio-Dome is closer to our reality than I’d like to admit. In it, the planet has become so polluted it’s rapidly becoming unsuitable for human life. (Sound familiar?) With the backing of a powerful investor, a group of environmental scientists seal themselves in an enormous enclosed terrarium for a year as part of a climate experiment. In true ’90s slacker comedy fashion, the two stoner protagonists accidentally get themselves locked inside the Bio-Dome, and, of course, wreak havoc. Though the film’s plot is fictional, its premise is loosely based on the real-life Biosphere 2, a $150-million hermetically sealed environmental system in Oracle, Arizona, with wilderness biomes including a rainforest, desert, grassy savannah, mangrove wetlands, and a 25-foot-deep ocean with a coral reef, in which eight researchers actually lived between 1991 and 1993. The experiment famously ended in disaster when rising carbon dioxide levels and crop failure threatened the participants’ lives. While geodesic domes with controlled environments designed to replicate Earth’s ecosystems seemed eccentric in the early 1990s, when climate change was just starting to enter the mainstream discourse, in the decades since, multimillion- or billion-dollar developments that bring the natural world—or simulations of it—inside have become increasingly common. In some cases, like with "the world’s largest indoor desert" in Omaha, Nebraska, or Montreal’s Biosphère (housed in the Expo 67 geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller), these attractions are centered around education and research. Then, there’s a slightly different iteration developed purely for recreation. As global temperatures rise and "unprecedented weather events" occur with increasing regularity, there might be a future where more of our outdoor recreation will be relegated to indoor simulations. In some ways, these built environments are case studies for how successfully (or unsuccessfully) natural environments can be replicated to facilitate the human pastimes—like surfing or skiing, even hiking—that rely on them. The indoor "beach" at the New Century Global Center in Chengdu—one of China’s most polluted cities—is illuminated by an artificial sun.Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Group’s Seagaia Ocean Dome was an early example of the over-the-top-faux-natural-environment-as-amusement-park phenomenon. Opened in 1993, the $1.8 billion facility, which was situated less than .2 miles from an actual beach in the coastal city of Miyazaki, Japan, was a Polynesia-themed marvel with a 129,166-square-foot man-made beach with sand from crushed marble and a wave machine capable of 200 surfable variations (in unsalted, chlorinated water). It closed in 2007, faltering under steep ticket prices and operational costs, but that wasn’t the end of the road for artificial beaches. There’s one at the colossal New Century Global Center in Chengdu, China, with space for more than 6,000 beachgoers to lounge under its fake sun. At Berlin’s Tropical Islands, which is housed in a 1938 airfield hangar, a massive screen with a photo of a blue sky hovers above a "sea" made up by three Olympic-size swimming pools. The indoor air temperature is kept in the high seventies. On the other end of the weather spectrum, there are indoor ski resorts like Ski Dubai, a 242,000-square-foot "snow park" in the Mall of the Emirates, where 30 to 40 tons of new snow are produced nightly to blanket five imitation ski slopes, or Big Snow American Dream, North America’s only indoor ski resort, in New Jersey. Ironically, the environmental impact of many of these climate-controlled facilities is significant; a 2013 report, for example, estimated that Ski Dubai’s annual greenhouse gas emissions equate to 900 annual round-trip flights from Dubai to Munich. Massive developments like Ski Dubai or Paradise Island Water Park that simulate natural environments in contained spaces pump tons of carbon into the atmosphere, only exacerbating the factors that increasingly threaten those places and make their conditions more hostile. Ski Dubai’s artificial snow is produced similarly to how faux snow is made at outdoor ski resorts.Christiana Moss of Studio Ma, an award-winning architecture and environmental design studio in Phoenix, Arizona, has some ideas about the way we should be approaching buildings that bring the outdoors indoors. As temperatures increase, especially in places like Phoenix, Moss believes more structures need to be suited to not only controlling contrasting indoor climates, but tempering them with the heat outside. "Increasingly, the realm of what you would consider indoors and what we consider outdoors needs to be expanded and blended to temper exterior temperatures," she says. "It’s about the layers of interior and exterior space.... It’s a huge opportunity for really rethinking and redesigning what we consider to be indoors and outdoors, what we consider to be responsible cities, and how we think about access to shade in daylight." The 3.14-acre Biosphere 2 laboratory includes "active research systems" such as ocean and desert environments and a rainforest ecosystem (pictured).Another major factor to consider is the growing body of research supporting the benefits of access to nature on physical and mental health. "In Eastern megacities, an indoor/outdoor environment is an easier way to access ‘natural’ space," says space architect Vittorio Netti, who works as a professor at University of Houston and also as an aerospace engineer at Axiom Space, referring to how for someone living in a cramped megacity, indoor "beaches" with real sand or enclosed "forests" with actual flora can provide easier access to elements of the natural world.Netti, who has spent significant time testing out simulated spaces for his work, believes that future luxury and quality of life will be defined by access to natural spaces. He stresses there are two overlooked areas in considering the design of enclosed "nature" simulations for humans: circadian rhythm and smell. To be truly convincing, faux natural environments should incorporate changes in light and darkness over a roughly 24-hour cycle. And they shouldn’t be sterile.The original Biosphere 2 experiment failed colossally when carbon dioxide levels in the self-contained bubble rose 10 times the normal atmospheric amount, making the enclosed ecosystem uninhabitable. In 2021, a Scientific American article that referred to the live-in terrarium as "effectively like a time machine that can preview a climate-altered Earth" detailed how, after a few decades and some significant retooling, the facility is finally living up to its potential as a site for important climate research. But the focus of its experiments are now centered on narrower questions about our real planet, rather than a man-made re-creation. According to astrobiologist Jacob Haqq Misra, who studies planet habitability and authored the book Sovereign Mars: Transforming Our Values Through Space Settlement, a dystopian vision of a future reliant on sealed ecosystems for "outdoor" recreation is more something of the public imagination than a prediction from actual experts. "The good news is, it would take a lot to make planet Earth uninhabitable," says Misra. Source link

[romaleen]

The premise of the critically panned 1996 film Bio-Dome is closer to our reality than I’d like to admit. In it, the planet has become so polluted it’s rapidly becoming unsuitable for human life. (Sound familiar?) With the backing of a powerful investor, a group of environmental scientists seal themselves in an enormous enclosed terrarium for a year as part of a climate experiment. In true ’90s slacker comedy fashion, the two stoner protagonists accidentally get themselves locked inside the Bio-Dome, and, of course, wreak havoc. Though the film’s plot is fictional, its premise is loosely based on the real-life Biosphere 2, a $150-million hermetically sealed environmental system in Oracle, Arizona, with wilderness biomes including a rainforest, desert, grassy savannah, mangrove wetlands, and a 25-foot-deep ocean with a coral reef, in which eight researchers actually lived between 1991 and 1993. The experiment famously ended in disaster when rising carbon dioxide levels and crop failure threatened the participants’ lives. While geodesic domes with controlled environments designed to replicate Earth’s ecosystems seemed eccentric in the early 1990s, when climate change was just starting to enter the mainstream discourse, in the decades since, multimillion- or billion-dollar developments that bring the natural world—or simulations of it—inside have become increasingly common. In some cases, like with "the world’s largest indoor desert" in Omaha, Nebraska, or Montreal’s Biosphère (housed in the Expo 67 geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller), these attractions are centered around education and research. Then, there’s a slightly different iteration developed purely for recreation. As global temperatures rise and "unprecedented weather events" occur with increasing regularity, there might be a future where more of our outdoor recreation will be relegated to indoor simulations. In some ways, these built environments are case studies for how successfully (or unsuccessfully) natural environments can be replicated to facilitate the human pastimes—like surfing or skiing, even hiking—that rely on them. The indoor "beach" at the New Century Global Center in Chengdu—one of China’s most polluted cities—is illuminated by an artificial sun.Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Group’s Seagaia Ocean Dome was an early example of the over-the-top-faux-natural-environment-as-amusement-park phenomenon. Opened in 1993, the $1.8 billion facility, which was situated less than .2 miles from an actual beach in the coastal city of Miyazaki, Japan, was a Polynesia-themed marvel with a 129,166-square-foot man-made beach with sand from crushed marble and a wave machine capable of 200 surfable variations (in unsalted, chlorinated water). It closed in 2007, faltering under steep ticket prices and operational costs, but that wasn’t the end of the road for artificial beaches. There’s one at the colossal New Century Global Center in Chengdu, China, with space for more than 6,000 beachgoers to lounge under its fake sun. At Berlin’s Tropical Islands, which is housed in a 1938 airfield hangar, a massive screen with a photo of a blue sky hovers above a "sea" made up by three Olympic-size swimming pools. The indoor air temperature is kept in the high seventies. On the other end of the weather spectrum, there are indoor ski resorts like Ski Dubai, a 242,000-square-foot "snow park" in the Mall of the Emirates, where 30 to 40 tons of new snow are produced nightly to blanket five imitation ski slopes, or Big Snow American Dream, North America’s only indoor ski resort, in New Jersey. Ironically, the environmental impact of many of these climate-controlled facilities is significant; a 2013 report, for example, estimated that Ski Dubai’s annual greenhouse gas emissions equate to 900 annual round-trip flights from Dubai to Munich. Massive developments like Ski Dubai or Paradise Island Water Park that simulate natural environments in contained spaces pump tons of carbon into the atmosphere, only exacerbating the factors that increasingly threaten those places and make their conditions more hostile. Ski Dubai’s artificial snow is produced similarly to how faux snow is made at outdoor ski resorts.Christiana Moss of Studio Ma, an award-winning architecture and environmental design studio in Phoenix, Arizona, has some ideas about the way we should be approaching buildings that bring the outdoors indoors. As temperatures increase, especially in places like Phoenix, Moss believes more structures need to be suited to not only controlling contrasting indoor climates, but tempering them with the heat outside. "Increasingly, the realm of what you would consider indoors and what we consider outdoors needs to be expanded and blended to temper exterior temperatures," she says. "It’s about the layers of interior and exterior space.... It’s a huge opportunity for really rethinking and redesigning what we consider to be indoors and outdoors, what we consider to be responsible cities, and how we think about access to shade in daylight." The 3.14-acre Biosphere 2 laboratory includes "active research systems" such as ocean and desert environments and a rainforest ecosystem (pictured).Another major factor to consider is the growing body of research supporting the benefits of access to nature on physical and mental health. "In Eastern megacities, an indoor/outdoor environment is an easier way to access ‘natural’ space," says space architect Vittorio Netti, who works as a professor at University of Houston and also as an aerospace engineer at Axiom Space, referring to how for someone living in a cramped megacity, indoor "beaches" with real sand or enclosed "forests" with actual flora can provide easier access to elements of the natural world.Netti, who has spent significant time testing out simulated spaces for his work, believes that future luxury and quality of life will be defined by access to natural spaces. He stresses there are two overlooked areas in considering the design of enclosed "nature" simulations for humans: circadian rhythm and smell. To be truly convincing, faux natural environments should incorporate changes in light and darkness over a roughly 24-hour cycle. And they shouldn’t be sterile.The original Biosphere 2 experiment failed colossally when carbon dioxide levels in the self-contained bubble rose 10 times the normal atmospheric amount, making the enclosed ecosystem uninhabitable. In 2021, a Scientific American article that referred to the live-in terrarium as "effectively like a time machine that can preview a climate-altered Earth" detailed how, after a few decades and some significant retooling, the facility is finally living up to its potential as a site for important climate research. But the focus of its experiments are now centered on narrower questions about our real planet, rather than a man-made re-creation. According to astrobiologist Jacob Haqq Misra, who studies planet habitability and authored the book Sovereign Mars: Transforming Our Values Through Space Settlement, a dystopian vision of a future reliant on sealed ecosystems for "outdoor" recreation is more something of the public imagination than a prediction from actual experts. "The good news is, it would take a lot to make planet Earth uninhabitable," says Misra. Source link

[monaleen101]

The premise of the critically panned 1996 film Bio-Dome is closer to our reality than I’d like to admit. In it, the planet has become so polluted it’s rapidly becoming unsuitable for human life. (Sound familiar?) With the backing of a powerful investor, a group of environmental scientists seal themselves in an enormous enclosed terrarium for a year as part of a climate experiment. In true ’90s slacker comedy fashion, the two stoner protagonists accidentally get themselves locked inside the Bio-Dome, and, of course, wreak havoc. Though the film’s plot is fictional, its premise is loosely based on the real-life Biosphere 2, a $150-million hermetically sealed environmental system in Oracle, Arizona, with wilderness biomes including a rainforest, desert, grassy savannah, mangrove wetlands, and a 25-foot-deep ocean with a coral reef, in which eight researchers actually lived between 1991 and 1993. The experiment famously ended in disaster when rising carbon dioxide levels and crop failure threatened the participants’ lives. While geodesic domes with controlled environments designed to replicate Earth’s ecosystems seemed eccentric in the early 1990s, when climate change was just starting to enter the mainstream discourse, in the decades since, multimillion- or billion-dollar developments that bring the natural world—or simulations of it—inside have become increasingly common. In some cases, like with "the world’s largest indoor desert" in Omaha, Nebraska, or Montreal’s Biosphère (housed in the Expo 67 geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller), these attractions are centered around education and research. Then, there’s a slightly different iteration developed purely for recreation. As global temperatures rise and "unprecedented weather events" occur with increasing regularity, there might be a future where more of our outdoor recreation will be relegated to indoor simulations. In some ways, these built environments are case studies for how successfully (or unsuccessfully) natural environments can be replicated to facilitate the human pastimes—like surfing or skiing, even hiking—that rely on them. The indoor "beach" at the New Century Global Center in Chengdu—one of China’s most polluted cities—is illuminated by an artificial sun.Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Group’s Seagaia Ocean Dome was an early example of the over-the-top-faux-natural-environment-as-amusement-park phenomenon. Opened in 1993, the $1.8 billion facility, which was situated less than .2 miles from an actual beach in the coastal city of Miyazaki, Japan, was a Polynesia-themed marvel with a 129,166-square-foot man-made beach with sand from crushed marble and a wave machine capable of 200 surfable variations (in unsalted, chlorinated water). It closed in 2007, faltering under steep ticket prices and operational costs, but that wasn’t the end of the road for artificial beaches. There’s one at the colossal New Century Global Center in Chengdu, China, with space for more than 6,000 beachgoers to lounge under its fake sun. At Berlin’s Tropical Islands, which is housed in a 1938 airfield hangar, a massive screen with a photo of a blue sky hovers above a "sea" made up by three Olympic-size swimming pools. The indoor air temperature is kept in the high seventies. On the other end of the weather spectrum, there are indoor ski resorts like Ski Dubai, a 242,000-square-foot "snow park" in the Mall of the Emirates, where 30 to 40 tons of new snow are produced nightly to blanket five imitation ski slopes, or Big Snow American Dream, North America’s only indoor ski resort, in New Jersey. Ironically, the environmental impact of many of these climate-controlled facilities is significant; a 2013 report, for example, estimated that Ski Dubai’s annual greenhouse gas emissions equate to 900 annual round-trip flights from Dubai to Munich. Massive developments like Ski Dubai or Paradise Island Water Park that simulate natural environments in contained spaces pump tons of carbon into the atmosphere, only exacerbating the factors that increasingly threaten those places and make their conditions more hostile. Ski Dubai’s artificial snow is produced similarly to how faux snow is made at outdoor ski resorts.Christiana Moss of Studio Ma, an award-winning architecture and environmental design studio in Phoenix, Arizona, has some ideas about the way we should be approaching buildings that bring the outdoors indoors. As temperatures increase, especially in places like Phoenix, Moss believes more structures need to be suited to not only controlling contrasting indoor climates, but tempering them with the heat outside. "Increasingly, the realm of what you would consider indoors and what we consider outdoors needs to be expanded and blended to temper exterior temperatures," she says. "It’s about the layers of interior and exterior space.... It’s a huge opportunity for really rethinking and redesigning what we consider to be indoors and outdoors, what we consider to be responsible cities, and how we think about access to shade in daylight." The 3.14-acre Biosphere 2 laboratory includes "active research systems" such as ocean and desert environments and a rainforest ecosystem (pictured).Another major factor to consider is the growing body of research supporting the benefits of access to nature on physical and mental health. "In Eastern megacities, an indoor/outdoor environment is an easier way to access ‘natural’ space," says space architect Vittorio Netti, who works as a professor at University of Houston and also as an aerospace engineer at Axiom Space, referring to how for someone living in a cramped megacity, indoor "beaches" with real sand or enclosed "forests" with actual flora can provide easier access to elements of the natural world.Netti, who has spent significant time testing out simulated spaces for his work, believes that future luxury and quality of life will be defined by access to natural spaces. He stresses there are two overlooked areas in considering the design of enclosed "nature" simulations for humans: circadian rhythm and smell. To be truly convincing, faux natural environments should incorporate changes in light and darkness over a roughly 24-hour cycle. And they shouldn’t be sterile.The original Biosphere 2 experiment failed colossally when carbon dioxide levels in the self-contained bubble rose 10 times the normal atmospheric amount, making the enclosed ecosystem uninhabitable. In 2021, a Scientific American article that referred to the live-in terrarium as "effectively like a time machine that can preview a climate-altered Earth" detailed how, after a few decades and some significant retooling, the facility is finally living up to its potential as a site for important climate research. But the focus of its experiments are now centered on narrower questions about our real planet, rather than a man-made re-creation. According to astrobiologist Jacob Haqq Misra, who studies planet habitability and authored the book Sovereign Mars: Transforming Our Values Through Space Settlement, a dystopian vision of a future reliant on sealed ecosystems for "outdoor" recreation is more something of the public imagination than a prediction from actual experts. "The good news is, it would take a lot to make planet Earth uninhabitable," says Misra. Source link

[iamownerofme]

The premise of the critically panned 1996 film Bio-Dome is closer to our reality than I’d like to admit. In it, the planet has become so polluted it’s rapidly becoming unsuitable for human life. (Sound familiar?) With the backing of a powerful investor, a group of environmental scientists seal themselves in an enormous enclosed terrarium for a year as part of a climate experiment. In true ’90s slacker comedy fashion, the two stoner protagonists accidentally get themselves locked inside the Bio-Dome, and, of course, wreak havoc. Though the film’s plot is fictional, its premise is loosely based on the real-life Biosphere 2, a $150-million hermetically sealed environmental system in Oracle, Arizona, with wilderness biomes including a rainforest, desert, grassy savannah, mangrove wetlands, and a 25-foot-deep ocean with a coral reef, in which eight researchers actually lived between 1991 and 1993. The experiment famously ended in disaster when rising carbon dioxide levels and crop failure threatened the participants’ lives. While geodesic domes with controlled environments designed to replicate Earth’s ecosystems seemed eccentric in the early 1990s, when climate change was just starting to enter the mainstream discourse, in the decades since, multimillion- or billion-dollar developments that bring the natural world—or simulations of it—inside have become increasingly common. In some cases, like with "the world’s largest indoor desert" in Omaha, Nebraska, or Montreal’s Biosphère (housed in the Expo 67 geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller), these attractions are centered around education and research. Then, there’s a slightly different iteration developed purely for recreation. As global temperatures rise and "unprecedented weather events" occur with increasing regularity, there might be a future where more of our outdoor recreation will be relegated to indoor simulations. In some ways, these built environments are case studies for how successfully (or unsuccessfully) natural environments can be replicated to facilitate the human pastimes—like surfing or skiing, even hiking—that rely on them. The indoor "beach" at the New Century Global Center in Chengdu—one of China’s most polluted cities—is illuminated by an artificial sun.Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Group’s Seagaia Ocean Dome was an early example of the over-the-top-faux-natural-environment-as-amusement-park phenomenon. Opened in 1993, the $1.8 billion facility, which was situated less than .2 miles from an actual beach in the coastal city of Miyazaki, Japan, was a Polynesia-themed marvel with a 129,166-square-foot man-made beach with sand from crushed marble and a wave machine capable of 200 surfable variations (in unsalted, chlorinated water). It closed in 2007, faltering under steep ticket prices and operational costs, but that wasn’t the end of the road for artificial beaches. There’s one at the colossal New Century Global Center in Chengdu, China, with space for more than 6,000 beachgoers to lounge under its fake sun. At Berlin’s Tropical Islands, which is housed in a 1938 airfield hangar, a massive screen with a photo of a blue sky hovers above a "sea" made up by three Olympic-size swimming pools. The indoor air temperature is kept in the high seventies. On the other end of the weather spectrum, there are indoor ski resorts like Ski Dubai, a 242,000-square-foot "snow park" in the Mall of the Emirates, where 30 to 40 tons of new snow are produced nightly to blanket five imitation ski slopes, or Big Snow American Dream, North America’s only indoor ski resort, in New Jersey. Ironically, the environmental impact of many of these climate-controlled facilities is significant; a 2013 report, for example, estimated that Ski Dubai’s annual greenhouse gas emissions equate to 900 annual round-trip flights from Dubai to Munich. Massive developments like Ski Dubai or Paradise Island Water Park that simulate natural environments in contained spaces pump tons of carbon into the atmosphere, only exacerbating the factors that increasingly threaten those places and make their conditions more hostile. Ski Dubai’s artificial snow is produced similarly to how faux snow is made at outdoor ski resorts.Christiana Moss of Studio Ma, an award-winning architecture and environmental design studio in Phoenix, Arizona, has some ideas about the way we should be approaching buildings that bring the outdoors indoors. As temperatures increase, especially in places like Phoenix, Moss believes more structures need to be suited to not only controlling contrasting indoor climates, but tempering them with the heat outside. "Increasingly, the realm of what you would consider indoors and what we consider outdoors needs to be expanded and blended to temper exterior temperatures," she says. "It’s about the layers of interior and exterior space.... It’s a huge opportunity for really rethinking and redesigning what we consider to be indoors and outdoors, what we consider to be responsible cities, and how we think about access to shade in daylight." The 3.14-acre Biosphere 2 laboratory includes "active research systems" such as ocean and desert environments and a rainforest ecosystem (pictured).Another major factor to consider is the growing body of research supporting the benefits of access to nature on physical and mental health. "In Eastern megacities, an indoor/outdoor environment is an easier way to access ‘natural’ space," says space architect Vittorio Netti, who works as a professor at University of Houston and also as an aerospace engineer at Axiom Space, referring to how for someone living in a cramped megacity, indoor "beaches" with real sand or enclosed "forests" with actual flora can provide easier access to elements of the natural world.Netti, who has spent significant time testing out simulated spaces for his work, believes that future luxury and quality of life will be defined by access to natural spaces. He stresses there are two overlooked areas in considering the design of enclosed "nature" simulations for humans: circadian rhythm and smell. To be truly convincing, faux natural environments should incorporate changes in light and darkness over a roughly 24-hour cycle. And they shouldn’t be sterile.The original Biosphere 2 experiment failed colossally when carbon dioxide levels in the self-contained bubble rose 10 times the normal atmospheric amount, making the enclosed ecosystem uninhabitable. In 2021, a Scientific American article that referred to the live-in terrarium as "effectively like a time machine that can preview a climate-altered Earth" detailed how, after a few decades and some significant retooling, the facility is finally living up to its potential as a site for important climate research. But the focus of its experiments are now centered on narrower questions about our real planet, rather than a man-made re-creation. According to astrobiologist Jacob Haqq Misra, who studies planet habitability and authored the book Sovereign Mars: Transforming Our Values Through Space Settlement, a dystopian vision of a future reliant on sealed ecosystems for "outdoor" recreation is more something of the public imagination than a prediction from actual experts. "The good news is, it would take a lot to make planet Earth uninhabitable," says Misra. Source link

[shelyold]

The premise of the critically panned 1996 film Bio-Dome is closer to our reality than I’d like to admit. In it, the planet has become so polluted it’s rapidly becoming unsuitable for human life. (Sound familiar?) With the backing of a powerful investor, a group of environmental scientists seal themselves in an enormous enclosed terrarium for a year as part of a climate experiment. In true ’90s slacker comedy fashion, the two stoner protagonists accidentally get themselves locked inside the Bio-Dome, and, of course, wreak havoc. Though the film’s plot is fictional, its premise is loosely based on the real-life Biosphere 2, a $150-million hermetically sealed environmental system in Oracle, Arizona, with wilderness biomes including a rainforest, desert, grassy savannah, mangrove wetlands, and a 25-foot-deep ocean with a coral reef, in which eight researchers actually lived between 1991 and 1993. The experiment famously ended in disaster when rising carbon dioxide levels and crop failure threatened the participants’ lives. While geodesic domes with controlled environments designed to replicate Earth’s ecosystems seemed eccentric in the early 1990s, when climate change was just starting to enter the mainstream discourse, in the decades since, multimillion- or billion-dollar developments that bring the natural world—or simulations of it—inside have become increasingly common. In some cases, like with "the world’s largest indoor desert" in Omaha, Nebraska, or Montreal’s Biosphère (housed in the Expo 67 geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller), these attractions are centered around education and research. Then, there’s a slightly different iteration developed purely for recreation. As global temperatures rise and "unprecedented weather events" occur with increasing regularity, there might be a future where more of our outdoor recreation will be relegated to indoor simulations. In some ways, these built environments are case studies for how successfully (or unsuccessfully) natural environments can be replicated to facilitate the human pastimes—like surfing or skiing, even hiking—that rely on them. The indoor "beach" at the New Century Global Center in Chengdu—one of China’s most polluted cities—is illuminated by an artificial sun.Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Group’s Seagaia Ocean Dome was an early example of the over-the-top-faux-natural-environment-as-amusement-park phenomenon. Opened in 1993, the $1.8 billion facility, which was situated less than .2 miles from an actual beach in the coastal city of Miyazaki, Japan, was a Polynesia-themed marvel with a 129,166-square-foot man-made beach with sand from crushed marble and a wave machine capable of 200 surfable variations (in unsalted, chlorinated water). It closed in 2007, faltering under steep ticket prices and operational costs, but that wasn’t the end of the road for artificial beaches. There’s one at the colossal New Century Global Center in Chengdu, China, with space for more than 6,000 beachgoers to lounge under its fake sun. At Berlin’s Tropical Islands, which is housed in a 1938 airfield hangar, a massive screen with a photo of a blue sky hovers above a "sea" made up by three Olympic-size swimming pools. The indoor air temperature is kept in the high seventies. On the other end of the weather spectrum, there are indoor ski resorts like Ski Dubai, a 242,000-square-foot "snow park" in the Mall of the Emirates, where 30 to 40 tons of new snow are produced nightly to blanket five imitation ski slopes, or Big Snow American Dream, North America’s only indoor ski resort, in New Jersey. Ironically, the environmental impact of many of these climate-controlled facilities is significant; a 2013 report, for example, estimated that Ski Dubai’s annual greenhouse gas emissions equate to 900 annual round-trip flights from Dubai to Munich. Massive developments like Ski Dubai or Paradise Island Water Park that simulate natural environments in contained spaces pump tons of carbon into the atmosphere, only exacerbating the factors that increasingly threaten those places and make their conditions more hostile. Ski Dubai’s artificial snow is produced similarly to how faux snow is made at outdoor ski resorts.Christiana Moss of Studio Ma, an award-winning architecture and environmental design studio in Phoenix, Arizona, has some ideas about the way we should be approaching buildings that bring the outdoors indoors. As temperatures increase, especially in places like Phoenix, Moss believes more structures need to be suited to not only controlling contrasting indoor climates, but tempering them with the heat outside. "Increasingly, the realm of what you would consider indoors and what we consider outdoors needs to be expanded and blended to temper exterior temperatures," she says. "It’s about the layers of interior and exterior space.... It’s a huge opportunity for really rethinking and redesigning what we consider to be indoors and outdoors, what we consider to be responsible cities, and how we think about access to shade in daylight." The 3.14-acre Biosphere 2 laboratory includes "active research systems" such as ocean and desert environments and a rainforest ecosystem (pictured).Another major factor to consider is the growing body of research supporting the benefits of access to nature on physical and mental health. "In Eastern megacities, an indoor/outdoor environment is an easier way to access ‘natural’ space," says space architect Vittorio Netti, who works as a professor at University of Houston and also as an aerospace engineer at Axiom Space, referring to how for someone living in a cramped megacity, indoor "beaches" with real sand or enclosed "forests" with actual flora can provide easier access to elements of the natural world.Netti, who has spent significant time testing out simulated spaces for his work, believes that future luxury and quality of life will be defined by access to natural spaces. He stresses there are two overlooked areas in considering the design of enclosed "nature" simulations for humans: circadian rhythm and smell. To be truly convincing, faux natural environments should incorporate changes in light and darkness over a roughly 24-hour cycle. And they shouldn’t be sterile.The original Biosphere 2 experiment failed colossally when carbon dioxide levels in the self-contained bubble rose 10 times the normal atmospheric amount, making the enclosed ecosystem uninhabitable. In 2021, a Scientific American article that referred to the live-in terrarium as "effectively like a time machine that can preview a climate-altered Earth" detailed how, after a few decades and some significant retooling, the facility is finally living up to its potential as a site for important climate research. But the focus of its experiments are now centered on narrower questions about our real planet, rather than a man-made re-creation. According to astrobiologist Jacob Haqq Misra, who studies planet habitability and authored the book Sovereign Mars: Transforming Our Values Through Space Settlement, a dystopian vision of a future reliant on sealed ecosystems for "outdoor" recreation is more something of the public imagination than a prediction from actual experts. "The good news is, it would take a lot to make planet Earth uninhabitable," says Misra. Source link

[iammeandmy]

The premise of the critically panned 1996 film Bio-Dome is closer to our reality than I’d like to admit. In it, the planet has become so polluted it’s rapidly becoming unsuitable for human life. (Sound familiar?) With the backing of a powerful investor, a group of environmental scientists seal themselves in an enormous enclosed terrarium for a year as part of a climate experiment. In true ’90s slacker comedy fashion, the two stoner protagonists accidentally get themselves locked inside the Bio-Dome, and, of course, wreak havoc. Though the film’s plot is fictional, its premise is loosely based on the real-life Biosphere 2, a $150-million hermetically sealed environmental system in Oracle, Arizona, with wilderness biomes including a rainforest, desert, grassy savannah, mangrove wetlands, and a 25-foot-deep ocean with a coral reef, in which eight researchers actually lived between 1991 and 1993. The experiment famously ended in disaster when rising carbon dioxide levels and crop failure threatened the participants’ lives. While geodesic domes with controlled environments designed to replicate Earth’s ecosystems seemed eccentric in the early 1990s, when climate change was just starting to enter the mainstream discourse, in the decades since, multimillion- or billion-dollar developments that bring the natural world—or simulations of it—inside have become increasingly common. In some cases, like with "the world’s largest indoor desert" in Omaha, Nebraska, or Montreal’s Biosphère (housed in the Expo 67 geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller), these attractions are centered around education and research. Then, there’s a slightly different iteration developed purely for recreation. As global temperatures rise and "unprecedented weather events" occur with increasing regularity, there might be a future where more of our outdoor recreation will be relegated to indoor simulations. In some ways, these built environments are case studies for how successfully (or unsuccessfully) natural environments can be replicated to facilitate the human pastimes—like surfing or skiing, even hiking—that rely on them. The indoor "beach" at the New Century Global Center in Chengdu—one of China’s most polluted cities—is illuminated by an artificial sun.Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Group’s Seagaia Ocean Dome was an early example of the over-the-top-faux-natural-environment-as-amusement-park phenomenon. Opened in 1993, the $1.8 billion facility, which was situated less than .2 miles from an actual beach in the coastal city of Miyazaki, Japan, was a Polynesia-themed marvel with a 129,166-square-foot man-made beach with sand from crushed marble and a wave machine capable of 200 surfable variations (in unsalted, chlorinated water). It closed in 2007, faltering under steep ticket prices and operational costs, but that wasn’t the end of the road for artificial beaches. There’s one at the colossal New Century Global Center in Chengdu, China, with space for more than 6,000 beachgoers to lounge under its fake sun. At Berlin’s Tropical Islands, which is housed in a 1938 airfield hangar, a massive screen with a photo of a blue sky hovers above a "sea" made up by three Olympic-size swimming pools. The indoor air temperature is kept in the high seventies. On the other end of the weather spectrum, there are indoor ski resorts like Ski Dubai, a 242,000-square-foot "snow park" in the Mall of the Emirates, where 30 to 40 tons of new snow are produced nightly to blanket five imitation ski slopes, or Big Snow American Dream, North America’s only indoor ski resort, in New Jersey. Ironically, the environmental impact of many of these climate-controlled facilities is significant; a 2013 report, for example, estimated that Ski Dubai’s annual greenhouse gas emissions equate to 900 annual round-trip flights from Dubai to Munich. Massive developments like Ski Dubai or Paradise Island Water Park that simulate natural environments in contained spaces pump tons of carbon into the atmosphere, only exacerbating the factors that increasingly threaten those places and make their conditions more hostile. Ski Dubai’s artificial snow is produced similarly to how faux snow is made at outdoor ski resorts.Christiana Moss of Studio Ma, an award-winning architecture and environmental design studio in Phoenix, Arizona, has some ideas about the way we should be approaching buildings that bring the outdoors indoors. As temperatures increase, especially in places like Phoenix, Moss believes more structures need to be suited to not only controlling contrasting indoor climates, but tempering them with the heat outside. "Increasingly, the realm of what you would consider indoors and what we consider outdoors needs to be expanded and blended to temper exterior temperatures," she says. "It’s about the layers of interior and exterior space.... It’s a huge opportunity for really rethinking and redesigning what we consider to be indoors and outdoors, what we consider to be responsible cities, and how we think about access to shade in daylight." The 3.14-acre Biosphere 2 laboratory includes "active research systems" such as ocean and desert environments and a rainforest ecosystem (pictured).Another major factor to consider is the growing body of research supporting the benefits of access to nature on physical and mental health. "In Eastern megacities, an indoor/outdoor environment is an easier way to access ‘natural’ space," says space architect Vittorio Netti, who works as a professor at University of Houston and also as an aerospace engineer at Axiom Space, referring to how for someone living in a cramped megacity, indoor "beaches" with real sand or enclosed "forests" with actual flora can provide easier access to elements of the natural world.Netti, who has spent significant time testing out simulated spaces for his work, believes that future luxury and quality of life will be defined by access to natural spaces. He stresses there are two overlooked areas in considering the design of enclosed "nature" simulations for humans: circadian rhythm and smell. To be truly convincing, faux natural environments should incorporate changes in light and darkness over a roughly 24-hour cycle. And they shouldn’t be sterile.The original Biosphere 2 experiment failed colossally when carbon dioxide levels in the self-contained bubble rose 10 times the normal atmospheric amount, making the enclosed ecosystem uninhabitable. In 2021, a Scientific American article that referred to the live-in terrarium as "effectively like a time machine that can preview a climate-altered Earth" detailed how, after a few decades and some significant retooling, the facility is finally living up to its potential as a site for important climate research. But the focus of its experiments are now centered on narrower questions about our real planet, rather than a man-made re-creation. According to astrobiologist Jacob Haqq Misra, who studies planet habitability and authored the book Sovereign Mars: Transforming Our Values Through Space Settlement, a dystopian vision of a future reliant on sealed ecosystems for "outdoor" recreation is more something of the public imagination than a prediction from actual experts. "The good news is, it would take a lot to make planet Earth uninhabitable," says Misra. Source link

[januishstory]

The premise of the critically panned 1996 film Bio-Dome is closer to our reality than I’d like to admit. In it, the planet has become so polluted it’s rapidly becoming unsuitable for human life. (Sound familiar?) With the backing of a powerful investor, a group of environmental scientists seal themselves in an enormous enclosed terrarium for a year as part of a climate experiment. In true ’90s slacker comedy fashion, the two stoner protagonists accidentally get themselves locked inside the Bio-Dome, and, of course, wreak havoc. Though the film’s plot is fictional, its premise is loosely based on the real-life Biosphere 2, a $150-million hermetically sealed environmental system in Oracle, Arizona, with wilderness biomes including a rainforest, desert, grassy savannah, mangrove wetlands, and a 25-foot-deep ocean with a coral reef, in which eight researchers actually lived between 1991 and 1993. The experiment famously ended in disaster when rising carbon dioxide levels and crop failure threatened the participants’ lives. While geodesic domes with controlled environments designed to replicate Earth’s ecosystems seemed eccentric in the early 1990s, when climate change was just starting to enter the mainstream discourse, in the decades since, multimillion- or billion-dollar developments that bring the natural world—or simulations of it—inside have become increasingly common. In some cases, like with "the world’s largest indoor desert" in Omaha, Nebraska, or Montreal’s Biosphère (housed in the Expo 67 geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller), these attractions are centered around education and research. Then, there’s a slightly different iteration developed purely for recreation. As global temperatures rise and "unprecedented weather events" occur with increasing regularity, there might be a future where more of our outdoor recreation will be relegated to indoor simulations. In some ways, these built environments are case studies for how successfully (or unsuccessfully) natural environments can be replicated to facilitate the human pastimes—like surfing or skiing, even hiking—that rely on them. The indoor "beach" at the New Century Global Center in Chengdu—one of China’s most polluted cities—is illuminated by an artificial sun.Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Group’s Seagaia Ocean Dome was an early example of the over-the-top-faux-natural-environment-as-amusement-park phenomenon. Opened in 1993, the $1.8 billion facility, which was situated less than .2 miles from an actual beach in the coastal city of Miyazaki, Japan, was a Polynesia-themed marvel with a 129,166-square-foot man-made beach with sand from crushed marble and a wave machine capable of 200 surfable variations (in unsalted, chlorinated water). It closed in 2007, faltering under steep ticket prices and operational costs, but that wasn’t the end of the road for artificial beaches. There’s one at the colossal New Century Global Center in Chengdu, China, with space for more than 6,000 beachgoers to lounge under its fake sun. At Berlin’s Tropical Islands, which is housed in a 1938 airfield hangar, a massive screen with a photo of a blue sky hovers above a "sea" made up by three Olympic-size swimming pools. The indoor air temperature is kept in the high seventies. On the other end of the weather spectrum, there are indoor ski resorts like Ski Dubai, a 242,000-square-foot "snow park" in the Mall of the Emirates, where 30 to 40 tons of new snow are produced nightly to blanket five imitation ski slopes, or Big Snow American Dream, North America’s only indoor ski resort, in New Jersey. Ironically, the environmental impact of many of these climate-controlled facilities is significant; a 2013 report, for example, estimated that Ski Dubai’s annual greenhouse gas emissions equate to 900 annual round-trip flights from Dubai to Munich. Massive developments like Ski Dubai or Paradise Island Water Park that simulate natural environments in contained spaces pump tons of carbon into the atmosphere, only exacerbating the factors that increasingly threaten those places and make their conditions more hostile. Ski Dubai’s artificial snow is produced similarly to how faux snow is made at outdoor ski resorts.Christiana Moss of Studio Ma, an award-winning architecture and environmental design studio in Phoenix, Arizona, has some ideas about the way we should be approaching buildings that bring the outdoors indoors. As temperatures increase, especially in places like Phoenix, Moss believes more structures need to be suited to not only controlling contrasting indoor climates, but tempering them with the heat outside. "Increasingly, the realm of what you would consider indoors and what we consider outdoors needs to be expanded and blended to temper exterior temperatures," she says. "It’s about the layers of interior and exterior space.... It’s a huge opportunity for really rethinking and redesigning what we consider to be indoors and outdoors, what we consider to be responsible cities, and how we think about access to shade in daylight." The 3.14-acre Biosphere 2 laboratory includes "active research systems" such as ocean and desert environments and a rainforest ecosystem (pictured).Another major factor to consider is the growing body of research supporting the benefits of access to nature on physical and mental health. "In Eastern megacities, an indoor/outdoor environment is an easier way to access ‘natural’ space," says space architect Vittorio Netti, who works as a professor at University of Houston and also as an aerospace engineer at Axiom Space, referring to how for someone living in a cramped megacity, indoor "beaches" with real sand or enclosed "forests" with actual flora can provide easier access to elements of the natural world.Netti, who has spent significant time testing out simulated spaces for his work, believes that future luxury and quality of life will be defined by access to natural spaces. He stresses there are two overlooked areas in considering the design of enclosed "nature" simulations for humans: circadian rhythm and smell. To be truly convincing, faux natural environments should incorporate changes in light and darkness over a roughly 24-hour cycle. And they shouldn’t be sterile.The original Biosphere 2 experiment failed colossally when carbon dioxide levels in the self-contained bubble rose 10 times the normal atmospheric amount, making the enclosed ecosystem uninhabitable. In 2021, a Scientific American article that referred to the live-in terrarium as "effectively like a time machine that can preview a climate-altered Earth" detailed how, after a few decades and some significant retooling, the facility is finally living up to its potential as a site for important climate research. But the focus of its experiments are now centered on narrower questions about our real planet, rather than a man-made re-creation. According to astrobiologist Jacob Haqq Misra, who studies planet habitability and authored the book Sovereign Mars: Transforming Our Values Through Space Settlement, a dystopian vision of a future reliant on sealed ecosystems for "outdoor" recreation is more something of the public imagination than a prediction from actual experts. "The good news is, it would take a lot to make planet Earth uninhabitable," says Misra. Source link

[acorviart]

king in his castle

[getthembees]

i think it’s funny that when damian goes missing bruce is calling all hands on deck to look for him like really getting the entire family involved but when cass gets kidnapped out of gotham by her mother and disappears that’s just tuesday. she’ll be back needing a glass of milk and a bath eventually don’t worry.

[iliothermia]

Indoors

[absentlyabbie]

i'll tell you what converted me to being all-in on keeping cats indoors only:

living for a year and a half in a rural area with a sudden feral cat colony explosion on the property.

i moved in with my folks for a bit and at that time, one (1) stray cat mama had taken up residence on the property, but was too feral to let my mother anywhere near her. but especially after she brought three kittens around, mom fed her and the kittens in hopes they'd grow trusting enough she could catch for spay and neuter at the minimum. momcat stayed mean and hella wary, but the kittens would hang around a little nearer and play with my mom via long stick, but still wouldn't come close enough to touch or catch.

unfortunately, two of the three kittens were girls and started having kittens of their own before further progress was made, shortly after i moved in. and that was pretty much instant doom.

there were so many kittens. SO MANY. multiple litters. every time we turned around, more kittens.

we fed them. we hunted for and located the kittens every time anywhere on the property and would move them to a repurposed doghouse anytime a mama cat had them somewhere else, so that they could grow up human-socialized and we could spay/neuter them when they were old enough. (also it was a handy tactic to push the issue of the mamas getting more used to/trusting of us themselves. only really worked with one of them, though.)

and we watched them die.

we watched litter after litter of kittens never make it to the age they could be spayed or neutered. the moms stayed, for the longest time, too skittish to more than briefly touch, much less catch and crate for a vet visit.

it sounds like a silly joke to say i have kitten-related ptsd, but i absolutely do.

too many goddamn times i'd walk out of the garage and find the carport and gravel drive strewn with tiny bodies. others simply went missing, never to be found.

one in particular, i wish i hadn't found, and the visual literally haunts me still, almost a decade later.

i saw so many kittens die of snake bite, spider bite, wild dogs, birds of prey, hit by cars, respiratory illness, covered in fleas and eyes crusted with infection.

and we loved them all. scrimped for antibiotics if the vet could be convinced to give it to us despite our being unable to bring them in. bought flea collars and ointments. we cared for them and fed them and petted them and played with them, brushed their fur and cleaned up their little faces, put ice in their water in hot summer, rigged a heating lamp in their house in the winter.

and they died. horribly. that property is pocked with unmarked graves of kittens and cats.

all the best intentions, not enough resources, and it didn't matter anyways because the population went from three to almost twenty (at times, over thirty) in the blink of an eye.

they died and died and died. our hearts broke over and over again. the stress and anxiety wore us down like sandpaper. i think, by the end of it all, we managed to find less than 10 of them all homes, including batman the disabled kitten i found a home across the country through tumblr.

it was carnage and tragedy, frankly. and we were helpless.

it only ended because they started dying faster than they could be born, and because we finally caught the two remaining mom cats in traps and got them spayed.

the points about outdoor cats being invasive predators devastating to local wildlife populations is true and valid and important.

but i know cat people, and cat people who don't know better than to let cats outdoors. what matters to you is the cat itself, generally. the cat being happy and taken care of.

keeping cats outdoors, letting them outdoors, is not taking care of the cats. it's not protecting them. it's not giving them any happiness or invigoration that couldn't be provided to them as indoor-only pets with just a little research and effort.

they die. they get ill. they get hurt. they're at risk of predators, and cars, and disease, and carelessly cruel children and deliberately cruel adults. they're at risk of disappearing on you because someone else saw a cat outdoors and intervened to give it a better, safer life not in conflict with the local environment.

and if that offends and angers you that someone would just take a cat they saw roaming outdoors, even collared, and that it sounds like i'm endorsing that, i am, but not if you intervene and be that person yourself for your own cat.

if what matters to you is doing right by your cat because it's family and a living creature whose happiness and health and safety is important to you,

keep them indoors. not part time. always. exclusively.

edit: since apparently i need to clarify this, i'm saying cats should live inside, that they should not live outdoors, even part time. visiting the outdoors supervised on a leash or in an enclosed catio is not the same as even part-time living outside, and i am certainly not advocating against it.