A New Frontier: Space Architecture

Discover the History of Space Architecture

With the recent successful launching of the Falcon 9 rocket in 2020 the world was left in awe as SpaceX managed to not only send its first crew into space but also to design a system that allows for the reuse of rockets. This accomplishment is huge in the aerospace community because it will make manned missions to outer orbit not only more accessible but also more common and less costly. With the mobilization of frequent missions to the international space station and strides to get to Mars, major questions have developed about whether we are ready for space architecture and human habitation in space. However, this hasn’t stopped the design community from imagining what life might be like on other planets were we to achieve this goal. This blog aims to observe the visionary connections between the fields of design, architecture, and interplanetary travel through a thorough examination of several case studies.

Space Architecture Precedents

One interesting project that can be observed through both the lens of architecture and aerospace design is Étienne-Louis Boullée’s proposed monument for Sir Isaac Newton. Large and almost unimaginable in scale the Cenotaph is known to many of us as a visionary sphere that pushed the boundaries of what the architectural imagination could conceive were it to depart from Vitruvian ideals of strength, functionality, and beauty. With his play of light and shadows, in the form of thousands of small punctures on the sphere, Étienne-Louis manages to transform a space that would otherwise be an endless dark pit into a space resembling a planetarium. What we might learn from this project may be hidden in the fact that almost like an illusion, the architect was able to create an artifact that harbored an almost infinite world; a world that simultaneously paid homage to enlightened ideals of the time and opened up the possibility for artificial architectural design and space architecture.

Another emerging interdisciplinary area of research where architecture can find space to collaborate with the aerospace community is the conceptualization of enclosures or the relationship between artificial items that we often take for granted - wearables. Enclosures that we keep our bodies in to protect from external environments can be adapted to allow us to survive in harsher environments outside of earth. If we can think about the ways in which our skin protects our organs, our clothes protect our being, our buildings protect our people, then an argument can be made for how architects can design habitats and even suits for outer space. One platform that is leading this conversation in the form of a competition is Blank Space. The project’s goal is to find new opportunities for design to engage the public, and for the public to join the design process. Fundamentally they believe architecture can do more. 

Work submitted to this competition ranges from the design of labs on Mars to the envisioning of intricate façade systems that would allow our existence on other planets. Platforms like these will pave a way for architects to play a vital role in the conversation of interplanetary travel.

However one cannot talk about layering, materials, and the scale of what it would take to build a world outside of our earth, without paying homage to John Desmond Bernal’s work. In his 1929 work titled “The World, the Flesh and the Devil: An Enquiry into the Three Enemies of the Rational Soul”, Bernal foresees a medium-term future where abundant energy and resources would offer humankind opportunities in its engagement with the three adversaries of the title- the “unintelligent forces of nature,” “his own body” and “his imaginations and stupidities.” Bernal’s work served as a framework for the ways in which many fields would talk and visualize space habitats for generations after.  His work focuses on multiple spheres or worlds, which have now come to be known as The Bernal Spheres. These spheres are layered with functional exterior coats each depending on the next to provide a zero-gravity habitat at the core. Perhaps one of the most interesting ways he describes these are in their functionality as filters; layers that are either protective or assimilative with “the outer as being hardly material; instead an energetic system, and the next transparent enough to allow sunlight and radiation for agriculture, the following circulates matter and energy and the next is all material storage- all of which are made possible by future breakthroughs in material science”.

The last and most interesting layer he describes is the human, who can only exist if the system performs without failure, and who is essential for the system’s maintenance. Bernal’s work was well beyond its time and can be used as a rubric for ways in which we think about architecture in space.

The Future of Space Architecture 

This reemergence of our interest in space provokes us to reflect on past innovations and imagine what more mankind can achieve. The opportunities for many fields, including architecture, are endless and essential. Designers who focus on space architecture must not only have skills in understanding astrobiology, astrophysics and human behavior, they must also have a strong foundation in the traditional architectural skillsets of planning, analytical thinking, structures, integrated systems thinking and design, knowledge of construction. With a look at precedent, the architect can apply all his skills-similar to how they plan, design and oversee construction of buildings on earth- in producing cutting-edge research, design and prototyping for generating space-related habitation.

By: Julian Usman, GKV Architects