140 Acres with $200 Million in Upgrades for Sale: BioSphere2 is up for Sale... Can I add it to my Christmas Wish List?

Article Published: Sunday, January 09, 2005 - 6:55:52 PM PST
Biosphere enclosure, plus campus, put on the block: "
By Associated Press

The company that owns Biosphere 2 Center, 3.1 glass-enclosed acres designed to simulate Earth's environment, has put the site up for sale.
The company is also selling 70 other buildings on the center's 140-acre campus 16 miles north of Tucson, said Christopher Bannon, general manager of Decisions Investment Corp. of Fort Worth, Texas.
'We'd love to see the Biosphere 2 used as a research activity, but we know that may not be the end result,' he said last week.
Texas billionaire Ed Bass, president of Decisions Investment, spent more than $200 million to build Biosphere 2 in the 1980s as a prototype for a space colony.
The closed ecological site contained miniatures of Earth's rain forest, ocean, desert and other environmental features.
In 1991, eight 'biospherians' were sealed inside for a two-year stay. But the project was plagued by rising costs and other setbacks and Columbia University assumed responsibility for the site under a management agreement, turning it into a research and education facility.
The relationship with Columbia ended in September 2003 and Biosphere 2 has been open as a tourist destination. --Associated Press "

My thoughts: Nice Idea to spend $200 Million dollars on a Space Colony, but it was ahead of it's time and did not have a plan to be self supporting through industrial production or patent technology at all. These I see as the BioSphere's great failings. Without these basic economic requirements for the pilot program it became a play thing of philosophers and little else. If one thinks about it if we are really going to build cities on the moon or any other planet 1. there will have to be a strong economic reason for us to invest so much money in placing people on a foriegn planet in such a permanent way that to not have any industrial capacity within Biosphere is short sighted and misses a MASSIVE part of the problem to making our Cities more ecologically and economically stable as well as livable. Men must work - as well as eat, sleep and sit and any architect that believes otherwise is, in my opinion, a dilitant that should be removed from the ideals of architecture. That list is topped by, in my opinion, Le Corbusier - who I personally hate for his grand visions of towers in parks, devoid of people in any productive activity what so ever - a man whose Utopia was Mass Idleness. (SEE NOTES BELOW)

ON the other hand, many problems of air-tight living spaces and recycling systems became evident, especially biological sanitation, air and water systems that require optimization of their process or else biological systems become overloaded and change the way they function - altering the "living machine" that many of these scientists are trying to build. The philosophy is right and we should explore these issues in such environments as Biosphere 2 because it allows us to control the parameters of the system more closely but I would propose that industry must be incorporated into lunar colonies as well as modern city centers for them to serve all human needs both material and spiritual. Idleness is not good for the soul and possibly even worse than evil action, from which at least cautionary tales can be extracted. Idleness is consumption as opposed to production.

Contacts:
Ed Bass, president of Decisions Investment of Fort Worth, Texas
Christopher Bannon, general manager

Site Description:
140 Acres with $200 Million in extras like -
Biosphere 2 Center, 3.1 glass-enclosed acres designed to simulate Earth's environment.
also 70 other buildings on the center's 140-acre campus 16 miles north of Tucson

I hope they put it on Ebay!


NOTE on Le Corbusier and Ebenezzer Howard - Vastly Influencial to the Current Architectural GroupThink.
Le Corbusier said he only really liked to build buildings of fixed function and use. His Masterpiece is a perfect example: The UN Building - It's vast flat facade stares back at you blankly in it massive stoic Idleness like some sort of cubist heroine addict. The vastness of it's plaza isolating it further from the life of the street and creating a barrier of open space in which the human frame feel exposed to the elements and in a sense scrutinized by the blank black tower that overhangs the plaza like a Giant Sleeping Gendarme leaning against a wall who may roll over in his sleep and crush you like a mouse, without ever awaking from his Dreams of Days of Idleness with which Le Corbusier lulled him to sleep. and use and although the UN Building has served the Same Function for the last 50 odd years, IT'S USEFULLNESS can EASILY BE BROUGHT INTO QUESTION. (But enough vitriole for Le Corbusier - join us next week when we attack that mealy-mouth Court Reporter of Vastly Overestimated Value - Ebenezzer Howard - the Father of Sprawl wasn't even an engineer or sociologist or architect or even a humanitarian but a misanthrop who wished nothing more than to be free of the "great throng of peoples" that filled the streets of London with up to 4 feet of manure, mud and garbage filth in his day with peddlers and traders in every nook and cranny in what appears to the wicked minds as chaos but is the very stuff of life in society itself, commerce, communication, Call out, Chatter, Bickering, Negotiations soft and loud, industry and assembly..