I grew up a witness to the Space Race, to astonishingly rapid advancements in technology and exploits that fulfilled the wildest dreams of a young space nerd. My heroes were the pioneering American astronauts and their trailblazing counterparts, the Soviet cosmonauts, as well as the brilliant rocket scientists and technicians that designed and built their spacecraft. I believed those early space exploration efforts were only a hint at the limitlessness of humankind’s potential. My faith in our ability to do wondrous things was richly rewarded when Apollo 11 landed on the Moon in July of 1969. I remember my wide-eyed amazement as a true miracle of modern science unfolded before me in grainy black-and-white television images. The experience encouraged me to think big, look beyond the horizon, and ponder life’s greatest questions.
Fast-forward fifty-one years. Today, all of us inhabit a much-smaller world, rendered all the more so by a raging global pandemic. COVID-19 has circumscribed our recreational outlets, but reading and the availability of good books offer some respite. I recently treated myself by purchasing another new book to read, one which combines my enthusiasm for space exploration with my life in architecture. Entitled International Space Station: Architecture Beyond Earth, the lavishly illustrated volume chronicles the history of the ISS from the viewpoint of its author, David Nixon, an architect who actually contributed to the early stages of its design. As a fellow architect with more than a passing interest in space technology, I was naturally drawn to Architecture Beyond Earth.
As most everyone knows, the International Space Station is an engineering achievement of epic proportions, an immensely complex and bold undertaking that has involved not only NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, but also ESA (the European Space Agency), JAXA (Japan), and CSA (Canada). President Reagan approved the ISS in 1984 but it wasn’t until 1998 that the first components of the space laboratory reached orbit. The first long-term residents arrived in November of 2000. Since then, the ISS has been continuously occupied; to date hundreds of astronauts, cosmonauts, and space tourists from 20 different nations have visited, lived, and worked in the station, sometimes for periods as long as a year. The collaborating nations have continuously expanded the facility, such that it is now comprised of fifteen habitable modules (with more additions scheduled) arrayed along an integrated truss structure. The ISS is the single biggest human-made object in space—109 meters long and 75 meters wide—and visible moving across the night sky without the aid of a telescope or binoculars.
Architecture Beyond Earth provides a comprehensive account of the ISS’ conception, design, and assembly in space. Perhaps the greatest parallels between the ISS and the earthbound architecture we’re more familiar with are the processes of design, engineering, problem-solving, and assembly/construction, as well as the politics of development and the trials and tribulations all large, complex projects inevitably encounter.(1)
As David Nixon describes in his book, NASA and its international collaborators dealt with more than their fair share of fiscal and political challenges in the course of making the ISS a reality. I don’t mean to engage in schadenfreude, but it’s strangely reassuring to know rocket scientists must confront and overcome challenges just as those of us involved with terrestrial design and construction projects do. Theirs were and are orders of magnitude more complex than encountered by all but the most ambitious of our jobs. The logistics alone—orchestrating a multinational set of partners and contractors, ensuring the compatibility and interoperability of countless systems, and bringing them all together (in space no less!)—are absolutely mind-boggling.
Clearly, the immense technological challenges associated with providing a safe habitat for people conducting important research while in the hostile environment of low-earth orbit take precedence over all other considerations. Economy of means, functionality, and maintainability were and are paramount. Despite Nixon characterizing the ISS as the “first great piece of extraterrestrial architecture” and likening it to some of the great architectural accomplishments on Earth, the reality is the ISS’ shimmering, brittle beauty is almost entirely incidental to its utility as a vessel for safely accommodating space scientists. Any stylishness or elegance the ISS possesses is a byproduct of its extreme functional imperative as a platform for Earth observation and space research.
The design of a space station adheres to a literally alien set of rules: There is no gravity or weather to overcome. “Up” and “down” are concepts rather than objective realities. And yet it is a place of habitation. Nixon acknowledges the importance of providing the ISS occupants with a pleasant environment in which to live and work, and how the ISS admittedly falls short in this respect. He cites Vitruvius’ venerable triad of architectural virtues—firmitas, utilitas, venustas—in the service of describing the ISS. Ultimately, we are obliged to measure how good a work of architecture is beyond considerations of commodity and firmness alone.
Retired NASA astronaut Nicole Stott wrote the book’s forward as a personal memoir of her stays in the ISS. She mentions her appreciation for the Station’s few true amenities, such as the seven-window cupola where the astronauts and cosmonauts can sit and look at the Earth, play a guitar, read a book, or just meditate. For Stott, the ISS was more than an astronomically expensive piece of scientific equipment; it was her home away from home during two separate missions in 2009 and 2011. The comfort and wellbeing of human beings are important considerations, especially in an environment they were not evolved to thrive within. Future space architecture will almost certainly transcend the needs of merely ensuring survivability and more fully address and enrich the crew members’ quality of life. After all, humans are feeling and thinking beings, and not robots.
Today, a new space race is underway as commercial ventures, such as SpaceX and Blue Origin, are competing to make access to space safe and cost-competitive. Both Elon Musk of SpaceX and Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin imagine homo sapiens becoming a truly spacefaring species, traveling the solar system and establishing permanent space settlements. Whether we ultimately see Martian colonies (Musk’s dream) or O’Neill cylinders (Bezos’ vision), architecture in its fullest sense will unquestionably play a key role. The lessons learned from the ISS experience will influence the design of future space habitats.
As an Amazon reviewer averred, “Nixon writes as an insider – one of the few architects invited to work on the Station’s design – which makes International Space Station: Architecture Beyond Earth a landmark publication.” By bringing an architect’s perspective to the project and his book, Nixon essentially argues for the necessity of making our future homes and places of work in space as habitable and hospitable as practicable. If you’re seeking an engrossing diversion during these extraordinary times, I highly recommend Architecture Beyond Earth.
(1) I’ve always been a sucker for books that chronicle the history of building projects, from their inception through completion and use. I am particularly fascinated by the architecture and engineering teams’ decision-making processes, their approach to understanding the projects’ parameters, how they determine and define the design problems to be solved, and the design solutions themselves. I can claim several volumes of this genre in my collection. Notable among these are the following:
- Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth: A Struggle Between Two World Systems
- The Biography of a Building; How Robert Sainsbury and Norman Foster Built a Great Museum
- Body Heat: The Story of the Woodward’s Redevelopment
- Mother’s House: The Evolution of Vanna Venturi’s House in Chestnut Hill
- Symphony: Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall
- The De Young in the 21st Century: A Museum by Herzog & de Meuron
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