Transcripts:Closed worlds What do outer space capsules submarines and office buildings have in common? Each was conceived as a closed system a self-sustaining physical environment demarcated from its surroundings by a boundary that does not allow for the transfer of matter or energy. The history of 20th century architecture design and engineering has been strongly linked to the conceptualisation and production of closed systems. As partial reconstructions of the world in time and in space closed systems identify and secure the cycling of materials necessary for the sustenance of life. Contemporary discussions about global warming, recycling and sustainability, have emerged as direct conceptual constructs related to the study and analysis of closed systems. From the space program, to countercultural architectural groups experimenting with autonomous living closed worlds documents a disciplinary transformation and the rise of a new environmental consensus in the form of a synthetic naturalism, where the laws of nature and metabolism are displaced from the domain of wilderness to the domain of cities and buildings. While these ideas derive from a deeply rooted fantasy of architecture producing nature, closed worlds displays their integration into the very fabric of reality in our contemporary cities and buildings. Closed worlds curated by Lydia Kalipoliti, exhibits an archive of 41 historical living prototypes from 1928 to the present that put forth an unexplored genealogy of closed resource regeneration systems. Prototypes are presented through unique discursive narratives with historical images and each includes new analysis in the form of a feedback drawing, that problematises the language of environmental representation by illustrating loss, derailment and the production of new substances and atmospheres. Each drawing displays a feedback loop wherein man's physiology of ingestion and excretion becomes the combustion device of an organisational system envisaged for humans animals and other life species. The moments of failure portrayed when closed worlds escape the designed loop, raise a series of questions about the ontology of autonomous enclosures. The exhibition archive, designed by Pentagram, showcases a timeline of the 41 prototypes that illuminates the ways in which they have contributed to the idea of net zero in our contemporary culture of sustainability. The timeline highlights the evolution of total circular resource regeneration from military research and the experiments of NASA's space program to more contemporary manifestations such as the benefits of the housing industry, countercultural practice for autonomous living in the city, nostalgia of the homesteading movement and ecological tourism and environmental capitalism. An adjacent display of speculative projects reflects upon a parallel historical narrative of enclosed spaces, figures of man and legislation related to closed systems. An expanded lexicon on environmental history derived from the study of the 41 prototypes is available online at www dot close worlds dot net. As part of this exhibition, the documentary Biospheres and The Rise of Botanical Capital. presents three large scale enclosed complexes which reproduce fully controlled sections of the natural world. The Eden Project in Cornwall,England, Amazon's New Biospheres in Seattle and the Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Arizona. Finally the closed worlds VR experience positions you as a user within a virtual diagram of two ecological houses built in the 1970s in London and Sydney. Both houses were built as laboratories and living experiments. They were occupied by their architects as part of the experiment. This exhibition was originally commissioned by the store front for art and architecture in New York in February 2016 and supported by the Graham Foundation, The New York State Council for the Arts, Syracuse University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Its current iteration is supported by UTS art and UTs School of Architecture.