Gallery: The Strange, Messy History of Self-Sustaining Habitats
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The NASA Langley Simulator.
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Invented by the Olgyay brothers at the Princeton Architectural Laboratory, Thermoheliodon was an analog simulation environment for smallscale architectural models in specific climates. This domed insular test bed, calibrated to high levels of calculation and precision, was developed with controls for temperature, airflow, humidity, and direction of light in specific climatic conditions.
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BIOS3 was a controlled ecological life support system (CELSS) that opened in 1972. The facility was atmospherically sealed, creating a need for oxygenation for the scientists living within the closed system.
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The exoskeletal harness system developed by Cornell’s Aeronautical Laboratory in 1972 was both a system of excessive technological ornamentation and a solid feedback loop in which motor impulses from nerves and muscles were picked up and fed to artificial muscles.
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Peter van Dresser, trained as a rocket engineer, became a pioneer in solar design after he left the American Rocket Society (ARS). Van Dresser devoted the remainder of his life to living off of the sun. He created a series of buildings at Ghost Ranch near Abiquiu, New Mexico, to explore the functionality of sun dwellings through the use of passive systems that created heating and cooling by natural means.
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The Continental Shelf Station (otherwise known as Conshelf), was a multistage project presided over by French naval lieutenant Jacques Cousteau. The project researched and designed underwater and oceanic habitats. The initial proposal involved five research stations submerged at a depth of 300 meters.
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Clean Air Pod (CAP 1500) was a 40 x 40 foot pneumatic bubble installation staged by the underground experimental group Antfarm to create awareness of air pollution in a time of “air emergency.” Reflecting upon the fear of toxic air, smog, and asphyxiation in urban environments in the early 1970s, Antfarm invited visitors who were passing by to enter the enclosed pneumatic bubble in order to breathe safely. The bubble was sealed off from the noxious atmospheric contaminants outside. Visitors who refused to enter the pod were asked to sign death consent forms stating that air pollution could kill them.
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Biosphere II remains the largest and most famous closed ecological system ever built. It was part of Space Biospheres Venture, an endeavor between Ed Bass (a businessman and philanthropist) and John P. Allen (a systems ecologist and environmentalist). The purpose of their venture was to test the viability of a biologically regenerative artificial environment that would support human habitats in space. The project cost $200 million to build and sustain.
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The Ark for Cape Cod was one of several ‘arks’ built by the radical environmental and anarchist group “The New Alchemists,” formed by John Todd and William McLarney. This experimental community practiced yearround contained agriculture, aquaculture, and passive solar heating. Pictured here is the ark’s opening in 1976.
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Mars500 was a 520day simulated mission to Mars that took place in Moscow, Russia as a collaboration between China, Russia, and the ESA. The purpose of the mission was to study the human physiological and psychological effects of extreme isolation that accompany long space flight journeys.
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In 1931, Auguste Piccard and his assistant Paul Kipfer became the first humans to reach the stratosphere. They completed the trip in a hermetically sealed aluminum gondola suspended from the largest balloon ever constructed (ten miles high in an airtight ball). To sustain human life in the stratosphere, the sealed gondola had internal systems for pressurization, temperature control, and air composition.
