Marc Cohen reports that space architects and engineers alike tend to see spacecraft and space habitat design as an entirely new departure, disconnected from the Earth. However, at least for Space Architecture, there is a continuum of development since the earliest formalizations of terrestrial architecture. Moving out from 1-G, Space Architecture enables the continuum from 1-G to other gravity regimes. The history of Architecture on Earth involves finding new ways to resist Gravity with non-orthogonal structures.
Space Architecture represents a new milestone in this progression, in which gravity is reduced or altogether absent from the habitable environment. The gravity regime and its effects change from Earth to orbit and beyond. Yet, gravity remains a design driver and geometric form generator – but in micro-G or partial-G it is a different driver; it leads to different forms, geometries, and physical solutions. Clarity of geometry and the structure it embodies is a first order indicator of the quality of architectural thought, particularly in response to the space environment in all its hazards and threats.
This odyssey of Space Station Architecture and the triangular-tetrahedral configuration demonstrates the importance of innovative and risk-taking architectural design research. It is almost axiomatic that when the Space Architect starts to do anything new, there will be an over-abundance of naysayers who will oppose the innovation,
Cupola in Nadir-viewing position on the “bottom” berthing port location on Harmony, Node 3. saying in essence “That way will never work because we have always done it this way.”
The practice of Space Architecture always involves the battle to show that new designs can be better than the existing ways. This Space Station Architecture took off on a different intellectual vector than the conventional wisdom at the time. Only by pursuing the design trajectory never taken previously, was it possible to conceive develop a set of inventions that would find their way into the Space Station Program, despite all the politics. In this case, necessity is only the great aunt of invention. The analysis that engenders a new view of reality comes first, opening a new channel to understand the design problem space. This new understanding, and the insights it brings about new possibilities and opportunities, makes all the difference. These new architectural design investigation and opportunities enable true advances in Space Architecture and other fields.
In this project, the new understanding and opportunities arose from the thorough analysis of traditional solid geometry and its implications for the orthogonal, 1-G-derived worldview. Understanding how Buckminster Fuller’s re-ordering of that worldview changed everything empowered the Space Station Architecture. The understanding must be comprehensive – as in Fuller’s Comprehensively Finite Topology. It is never about the superficialities of how forms look, who likes them, or what the politics may say. In this project, the success of Space Architecture came from following carefully and applying rigorously the design logic dictated by function, geometry, and structure.
For additional information, see: http://www.astrotecture.com/Welcome_files/AIAA-2012-3575.Continuum.pdf
For information of Water Walls in Spaceship design: http://www.astrotecture.com/Welcome_files/GLEX-2012.10.1.9x12503.REV.Water_Walls.Cohen,Flynn,Matossian.pdf
Original URL: https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/740784main_Cohen_Spring_Symposium_2013.pdf
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