As humanity enters the third space age — an era defined by commercial expansion and increased interest in orbital habitation — a fundamental question remains: should space architecture endeavour to recreate Earth?
This essay contends that such an approach produces a ‘biological museum’, keeping its inhabitants evolutionarily stagnant within a simulated environment of a planet they no longer inhabit. Through a critical analysis of Gerard O’Neill’s Island Three cylinders and Brent Sherwood’s LEO Parti, this essay investigates how these proposals are influenced by Modernist tenets of functionalism and the false binary between Nature and Culture, uncovering the fragility of the resultant state.