A painting of a prospective future lunar colony by artist Rick Guidice for NASA. Image Courtesy of NASA
As the world spins deeper into the third year of a global pandemic with no sign of abating, a new space race is forming over our heads. Entry is open to all, and the tickets are literal. The Architect's Newspaper's Jonathan Hilburg explores how the world's richest men are charting new paths for the human species, and how the public are reacting to the future of private space tourism.
Bjarke Ingels Group has collaborated with NASA and ICON to create Mars Dune Alpha, a 3D-printed research habitat that will provide long duration habitation for astronauts on missions to Mars. The 1,700 sq.ft. structure, which is currently located at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, is designed by the award-winning architecture firm, 3D printed by construction developers ICON, and will soon be home to NASA's future crew.
BIG has partnered up with ICON, a developer of advanced construction technologies, and with SEArch+ (Space Exploration Architecture) to imagine humanity’s home in another world. Working with NASA, the collaboration seeks to develop a “space-based construction system that could support future exploration of the Moon”.
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) has signed a Memorandum of Collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) in order to further develop their existing research for Moon Village. Signed in Paris, by Colin Koop, Design Partner at SOM, and Johann-Dietrich Wörner, Director General of ESA, the announcement was made earlier this month.
In the Negev Desert of Israel, SAGA Space Architects are collaborating with D-MARS to build a Mars Lab Habitat that will simulate the conditions of living in a confined space on the hazardous surface of the red planet. The laboratory structure they’ve designed is an addition to D-MARS' existing Mars simulation habitat and will be part of a larger experiment. This habitat will serve as a prototype for a longer mission scheduled for 2020.
Architects often look for inspiration in anything and everything around them: forms, volumes, artwork, music, nature… But some sources (and projects) are just out of this world. Literally.
NASA has created an online library of 140,000 high-resolution photos, videos, and sound clips, all free and available for download. Here is a selection of images for your dose of interstellar inspiration.
Skidmore Owings and Merrill have unveiled their vision for the "Moon Village", the first permanent human settlement on the Lunar surface. Developed in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the multidisciplinary project will be masterplanned, designed, and engineered by SOM.
https://www.archdaily.com/914813/som-unveils-vision-for-first-human-settlement-on-the-moonNiall Patrick Walsh
The European Space Agency has teamed up with a group of architecture students to speculate on the future design of sustainable lunar habitats. From the ESA’s astronaut center in Cologne, Germany, the organization challenged the students to draw on extreme environments in remote places, and speculate on sourcing and producing materials on the Moon to build a sustainable habitat.
Giving consideration to sunlight, temperature, and terrain, the design team developed a system of inflatable modules that can land at the base of a small crater on the South Polar Region of the Moon, where they will gradually fill the cavity with lunar soil until the modules are effectively buried.
https://www.archdaily.com/911182/architecture-students-imagine-a-moon-base-with-the-european-space-agencyNiall Patrick Walsh
Clouds Architecture Office have revealed a new design for a space research lab that floats above a crater in Oita, Japan. Called AVATAR X LAB, the design was made for ANA Holdings Inc. and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. The lab aims to be part of ANA's AVATAR Vision, an endeavor to advance and pioneer real-world Avatar technologies, and JAXA's new research and development program J-SPARC. The lab was designed to advance understanding of space exploration and development.
Following the announcement by SpaceX founder Elon Musk that Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa would be the first paying customer to visit the Moon, the retail tycoon generated further excitement by declaring he would bring between six and eight artists to accompany him.
The “Dear Moon” project would see a painter, musician, film director, and others, accompany Maezawa in order to “dream dreams that have never been dreamed…to sing songs that have never been sung, to paint that which has never been seen before.”
https://www.archdaily.com/903090/life-on-the-moon-according-to-8-architects-and-artistsNiall Patrick Walsh
A public event will be held to kick off World Space Week at AIA Houston on the evening of Thursday, Oct 4 as part of the AERIAL FUTURES: The Next Frontier think tank taking place in Houston between Oct 4-5, 2018.
Expanding Houston’s reputation as Space City, USA, Ellington Airport’s conversion into the Houston Spaceport will reiterate the city’s role as a front-runner in the space race of the 21st Century. As the most urban-centered commercial spaceport to date – Houston Spaceport is within a 15-minute drive of the central business district – this development will serve as a detonator in
Foster + Partners will detail its vision of life on Mars and the Moon at the UK’s Goodwood Festival of Speed 2018. Forming part of the festival's Future Lab event, the vision will be presented through a range of models, robotics, and futuristic designs exploring the future of life in space.
The firm's showcase will include a virtual reality experience, allowing visitors to explore the inside of a proposed state-of-the-art habitation pod.
https://www.archdaily.com/897677/foster-plus-partners-to-present-vision-of-life-on-mars-at-uks-goodwood-festivalNiall Patrick Walsh
The International Workshop RCR is born of a way of understanding Architecture and Landscape from a humanistic spirit. The coexistence in a space and time of different creative disciplines creates synergies for mutual enrichment between the parties.
The workshop is designed following four main ideas that articulate the program:
- Competition Format: Closed exercises that condense a complex process within a specific time frame - Transversality: An integrative interdisciplinary approach - Sharing: Shared creativity fostering the capacity for dialogue - Experience: Understanding derived from observation, participation and experience
The Program consists in
- Creative Atelier. The workshop offers a brief approach to the elements that surround scenography:
In the 1920s, Dutch-born artist Piet Mondrian began painting his iconic black grids populated with shifting planes of primary colors. By moving beyond references to the world around him, his simplified language of lines and rectangles known as Neo Plasticism explored the dynamics of movement through color and form alone. Though his red, yellow and blue color-blocked canvases were important elements of the De Stijl movement in the early 1900s, almost a century later Mondrian’s abstractions still inspire architects across the globe.
But, what is it about these spatial explorations that have captivated artists and designers for so long?
The Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design & Space, the world’s largest festival of performance design and theatre architecture. Established in 1967 to bring the best of design for performance, scenography, and theatre architecture to the front line of cultural activities to be experienced by professional and emerging artists as well as the general public, the quadrennial exhibitions, festivals, and educational programs act as a global catalyst of creative progress by encouraging experimentation, networking, innovation, and future collaborations. PQ aims to honor, empower and celebrate the work of designers, artists and architects while inspiring and educating audiences, who are the most essential element
The topic for this year’s symposium is Artificial Natures, ranging from classical ones, such as parks and ideal cities, to garden cities, to new “natural “ environments like social media spaces as new public place. The symposium will take place as a combination of short panels and workgroups.
Established in 2011, the competition aims to foster the creativity of young architects by challenging them to complete “innovative, audacious and promising projects” that imagine new methods of sustainable development within the realms of sea and space.
Architectural submissions were awarded this year within three categories: Innovation and Architecture for the Sea, Innovation and Architecture for Space, and Architecture and Sea Level Rise. Within these categories, projects were selected in three disciplines: the overall Grand Prix, the “Focus” theme award, and the Coup de Coeur.