Space Architecture: The New Frontier for Design Research

140 Pages·2014·11.06 MB·English

by  Neil Leach

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
SPACE ARCHITECTURE
GUEST-EDITED BY
NEIL LEACH
THE NEW FRONTIER FOR
DESIGN RESEARCH
06 / 2014
ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014
ISSN 0003-8504
PROFILE NO 232
ISBN 978-1118-663301
1
IN THIS ISSUE
ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
GUEST-EDITED BY SPACE ARCHITECTURE: THE NEW
NEIL LEACH
FRONTIER FOR DESIGN RESEARCH
5 EDITORIAL 30 MoonCapital:
Helen Castle Life on the Moon 100 Years After Apollo
Andreas Vogler
6 ABOUT THE GUEST-EDITOR
Neil Leach 36 Architecture For Other Planets
A Scott Howe
8 INTRODUCTION
Space Architecture: Th e New Frontier 40 Buzz Aldrin: Mission to Mars
for Design Research Neil Leach
Neil Leach
46 Colonising the Red Planet:
16 What Next for Human Space Flight? Humans to Mars in Our Time
Brent Sherwood Robert Zubrin
20 Planet Moon: Th e Future of 54 Terrestrial Space Architecture
Neil Leach
Astronaut Activity and Settlement
Madhu Th angavelu
64 Space Tourism: Waiting for Ignition
Ondřej Doule

70 Alpha: From the International Style
to the International Space Station
Constance Adams and Rod Jones
EDITORIAL BOARD
Will Alsop
Denise Bratton
Paul Brislin
Mark Burry
André Chaszar
Nigel Coates
Peter Cook
Teddy Cruz
Max Fordham
Massimiliano Fuksas
Edwin Heathcote
Michael Hensel
Anthony Hunt
Charles Jencks
Bob Maxwell
Brian McGrath
Jayne Merkel
Peter Murray
Mark Robbins
Deborah Saunt
Patrik Schumacher
Neil Spiller
Leon van Schaik 36
Michael Weinstock
Ken Yeang
Alejandro Zaera-Polo
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108
78 Being a Space Architect: 108 3D Printing in Space
Astrotecture™ Projects for NASA Neil Leach
Marc M Cohen
114 Astronauts Orbiting on Th eir Stomachs:
82 Outside the Terrestrial Sphere Th e Need to Design for the Consumption
and Production of Food in Space
Greg Lynn FORM: N.O.A.H. (New Outer
Atmospheric Habitat) and New City Sandra Häuplik-Meusburger
Greg Lynn
118 Brave New Worlds: Reaching Towards
90 Ground Control: Space Architecture a New Era of Space Architecture
as Defi ned by Variable Gravity Larry Bell
Ondřej Doule
122 Terrestrial Feedback:
96 Projecting Into Space: Refl ections on the Space Industry
International Student Projects Neil Leach
Neil Leach
128 COUNTERPOINT
Space is an Ecology for Living In
Rachel Armstrong
134 CONTRIBUTORS
Th e future of the past is in the future
Th e future of the present is in the past
Th e future of the future is in the present
3
— John McHale, 1965, in 2000+,
February 1967, p 64
128
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ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
1
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014
PROFILE NO 232
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Front cover: Self-portrait of Tracy Caldwell
Dyson in the Cupola module of the International
Space Station observing the Earth below during
Expedition 24, 2010. Courtesy of NASA/Tracy
Caldwell Dyson
Inside front cover: Julia Koerner, Space
Collective (detail), (tutors: Greg Lynn and
Brennan Buck), MArch, University of Applied
Arts, Vienna, 2007. © Julia Koerner
06 / 2014
44
EDITORIAL
Helen Castle
Space represents a unique chance to look up and beyond ourselves. It is an opportunity
that has not been missed by 3 over the years – forever casting its eye on the horizon
for what might be happening next culturally, socially and technologically. Space
Architecture is the third issue of 3 on the subject. The first, seminal issue 2000+ was
published in February 1967 under the editorship of Monica Pidgeon and Robin
Middleton (technical editor). The material was compiled and much of it written by
scholar–artist and Father of Pop Art John McHale, who was then Executive Director
and Research Associate of the World Resources Inventory at Southern Illinois
University. With its red, eye-catching cover depicting the head of an astronaut, it
captured the zeitgeist with two articles by Buckminster Fuller, its late-1960s enthusiasm
for technological hardware and everything space related. It also anticipated the lunar
landings by two years. Pasted together from a whole range of astronautical engineering
sources, it fully established 3’s and its readerships’ penchant for the nerdily technical.
The second issue, guest-edited by Rachel Armstrong in April 2000, conspired to
reinvigorate the enthusiasm of the design community in the astronautical and bring
their attention to the new possibilities introduced by space tourism. Like the first issue,
it also foreshadowed events by coming out a year before the first space tourist Dennis
Tito blasted into space on the 28 April 2001.
This third issue of 3 on Space brings with it an entirely different emphasis on
design research. It is guest-edited by Neil Leach, who has a distinguished career as an
architectural educator and author, but is also a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts
Fellow working at the University of Southern California (USC) on a research project
to develop a robotic fabrication technology to print structures on the Moon and Mars
(see ‘3-D Printing in Space’ on pp 108 –13 of this issue). Leach demonstrates how
Space provides not only a test bed for new technologies, such as robotics, that are set
to become game-changing for terrestrial architecture, but also provides a catalyst for
pushing the boundaries in terms of ideas, imagination and lifestyles: whether it prompts
inventive speculative design from the likes of Greg Lynn (pp 82–7) or seeks us to
explore the climatic and practical challenges that might be thrown up by the human
colonisation of the Moon or Mars. Moreover, for architects, designing for Space is now
becoming less a matter of speculation and more one of live projects. This is epitomised
by the engagement of a premier international firm like Foster + Partners on the design
of Spaceport America in New Mexico and the firm’s further participation in space
research as a key collaborator in the European Space Agency (ESA) consortium that is
investigating the potential of 3D printing on the Moon.
There is a neat circularity to this volume, as Rachel Armstrong provides the
Counterpoint to this issue. With characteristic tenacity, she challenges readers to
explore a wider notion of how planets might be developed as biological ecologies for
habitation rather than as discrete territories for exploitation. 1
left: 3 2000+, February 1967.
right: Rachel Armstrong, 3 Space
Architecture, April 2000.
Text © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images:
top © Illustration by Frances Castle; bottom
© John Wiley & Sons Ltd
55
Neil Leach, 1 Digital Cities, 2009 Neil Leach, David Turnbull and Chris Neil Leach, Designing for a Digital Neil Leach, Kristina Shea, Spela
This issue of 3 looks at the impact of Williams, Digital Tectonics, 2004 World, 2002 Videcnik and Jeroen van Mechelen,
computation not only on the design of The book addresses the use of This volume brings together some of the eifFORM installation, Academie van
cities, but also on techniques of analysing computation in designing structures and leading architects, philosophers and cultural Bouwkunst, Amsterdam, 2003
and understanding them. structural systems in architecture. In so theorists from across the globe to look at Constructed in the Academie’s courtyard,
doing it outlines both a structural turn the impact of digital technologies on the the design of this installation was generated
in architecture, as structural efficiency world of design. using eifFORM, a software program that
becomes an increasingly important produces structurally efficient forms in a
factor in design, and the impact of stochastic non-monotonic method, using
computation on structural design. simulated annealing.
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ABOUT THE GUEST-EDITOR
NEIL LEACH
Neil Leach is an architect and theorist. He is currently Professor of Digital Design
at the European Graduate School, Visiting Professor at Harvard Graduate School
of Design (GSD) and Tongji University, and Adjunct Professor at the University of
Southern California (USC), Los Angeles. He is also a NASA Innovative Advanced
Concepts Fellow, working in collaboration with colleagues from USC on a research
project to develop a robotic fabrication technology to print structures on the Moon
and Mars. The project stems from deeper research into computational design and
robotic fabrication technologies, especially Contour Crafting, a technology for
layered concrete construction invented by Behrokh Khoshnevis, with whom he has
collaborated for several years.
His research work on computational design and robotic fabrication technologies
has taken the form of a series of publications, exhibitions and conferences. His
publications in this field include: Designing for a Digital World (Wiley, 2002); Digital
Tectonics (Wiley, 2004); Emerging Talents, Emerging Technologies (China Architecture
and Building Press (CABP), 2006); (Im)material Processes: New Digital Techniques
for Architecture (CABP, 2008); 3 Digital Cities (Wiley, 2009); Machinic Processes
(CABP, 2010); Fabricating the Future (Tongji University Press, 2012); Scripting the
Future (Tongji University Press, 2012); Digital Workshop China (Tongji University
Press, 2013); Design Intelligence: Advanced Computational Research (CABP, 2013);
and Swarm Intelligence: Architectures of Multi-Agent Systems (Tongji University Press,
2014). He has also curated a series of exhibitions and associated conferences in
this field including: ‘Fast Forward>>’ (Architecture Biennial Beijing (ABB), 2004);
‘Emerging Talents, Emerging Technologies’ (ABB, 2006); ‘(Im)material Processes:
New Digital Techniques for Architecture’ (ABB, 2008); ‘Machinic Processes’ (ABB,
2010); ‘Swarm Intelligence: Architectures of Multi-Agent Systems’ (Shanghai,
2010); ‘DigitalFUTURE’ (Shanghai, 2011); ‘Interactive Shanghai’ (Shanghai, 2013);
and ‘Design Intelligence: Advanced Computational Research’ (Beijing, 2013).
His other field of research is the intersection between architectural theory
and critical theory/philosophy. His publications in this field include: Rethinking
Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory (Routledge, 1997); The Anaesthetics of
Architecture (MIT Press, 1999); Millennium Culture (Ellipsis, 1999); Architecture and
Revolution: Contemporary Perspectives on Central and Eastern Europe (Routledge,
1999); The Hieroglyphics of Space: Reading and Experiencing the Modern Metropolis
(Routledge, 2002); Forget Heidegger (Paideia, 2006); Camouflage (MIT Press, 2006);
and The Politics of Space (Routledge, forthcoming).
He holds an MA and Diploma of Architecture from the University of
Cambridge, and a PhD degree from the University of Nottingham, and is a
registered architect in the UK. 1
Text © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Images: p 6(t) © Neil Leach; p 6(b) © John
Wiley & Sons Ltd; p 7 © Oleg Kvashuk,
Violetta Podets
77
INTRODUCTION Curiosity rover self-portrait, Mars, 3 February 2013
The self-portrait was taken on a patch of fl at outcrop called
Neil Leach John Klein, where the NASA rover was due to perform rock-
drilling activities. The image is actually composed of dozens
of exposures stitched together.
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