Terraria Gigantica: The World under Glass

89 Pages·2017·22.08 MB·English

by  Carrie Robbins, Dana Fritz

Terraria Gigantica

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Contents
Preface
Dana Fritz vii
Introduction
TERRARIA GIGANTICA | The World under Glass, 2007–2011
William L. Fox 1
COLOR PLATES 7
THE WORLD UNDER GLASS | Dana Fritz and the Photography of Terraria
Carrie Robbins 55
Epilogue
Rebecca Reider 65
List of Color Plates 71
Acknowledgments 73
Contributors 75

Preface
Dana Fritz
Visiting many of the great Victorian glasshouses to make photographs for a
previous project, I began to wonder about a twenty- first-century equivalent
that collected plants from faraway places and invited the public to enjoy
them. As I began to research this subject I discovered that these contempo-
rary “glasshouses” were of an increasingly larger scale, utilizing advanced
architectural and engineering technology in a race to claim the superlative of
“largest,” if only until the next one was built. They also incorporated paint-
ing and sculpture to create a more immersive experience for visitors. As an
artist, these places captivated me both visually and conceptually. I selected
the Henry Doorly Zoo, Biosphere 2, and the Eden Project because they were
indeed the world’s largest vivaria at the time. They had many similarities,
including a focus on research and on educating and entertaining the public.
However, each has a unique mission and character. These architectural and
engineering marvels stand as working symbols of our current and complex
relationship with the nonhuman world.
The Henry Doorly Zoo supports both education and research on a campus
with numerous outdoor exhibits and buildings covering more than 130 acres
in Omaha, Nebraska. The Lied Jungle, the largest indoor rain forest in the
United States, opened in 1992. It is carved into the earth, disguising its
eighty-foot height. In contrast, the Desert Dome, which opened in 2002, is
the largest indoor desert under the largest geodesic dome in the world and
can be seen from quite a distance beyond the zoo’s campus. The illusionism
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of these immersive environments also incorporates the display of the animals
that live there. Starting in the 1980s, zoos began shifting from the older mode
of displaying animals in simple enclosures to a new mode of creating hyper-
real, immersive environments. To this end, the trees in the Lied Jungle were
designed using molds taken from trees in Costa Rica’s rain forest, and the walls
feature large murals that offer an illusion of a deep, misty forest. The Lied Jun-
gle condenses and exaggerates the most impressive features of rain forests.
It is in the realm of what Umberto Eco calls “hyperreality”—imitations that are
intended to be better than the originals. Creating an immersive indoor jungle
environment requires careful landscape design incorporating overlapping and
often indistinguishable living and artificial plants. The Desert Dome, while
teeming with dramatic vistas and constructed canyons, cannot rely on plant
density and mist to camouflage the architectural elements. I was struck by the
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an difference in the two facilities and noticed a design focus on striking visual
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F forms against the background of the geodesic dome structure.
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Biosphere 2’s 3.14-acre, glass-and-metal-framed structure contains a trop-
ical rain forest, mangrove wetlands, a fog desert, a savannah grassland, and
an ocean with a coral reef. Built around the same time as the Lied Jungle by
Space Biosphere Ventures, it was originally designed as an artificial closed
ecological system that would support and maintain human life. From Septem-
ber 1991 to September 1993 a crew of eight biospherians lived inside; they
grew all their food and conducted research on the systems and on themselves,
testing the feasibility of space colonization. Biosphere 2 was also designed to
be a tourist attraction that generated revenue from visitors who would travel
to the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains outside of Tucson, Arizona, to
see this architectural wonder and the people living inside it. No longer airtight,
it is now owned by the University of Arizona and is repurposed toward under-
standing the natural and human-made environment of “Biosphere 1”—that is,
planet Earth. The current mission includes training interdisciplinary scientists,
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science education, and public outreach. I was surprised and fascinated when fa
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