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Space architecture is already a bona fide specialty within THE PROFESSION. its lessons will infiltrate the mainstream, changing the way we DESIGN, build, AND … THINK

By Sara Hart

In the meantime, with automation gaining ground, the earthbound architect who has mastered the principles of statics in order to design a building that will stand up will soon need to have a basic knowledge of kinematic principles in order to design to the complex behavior of robotics, placement and performance of sensors and actuators, and their integration into building components. Finally, Howe highly recommends that any architect who is serious about design with a robust, flexible kit of parts, should study the Lego system, especially the Mindstorms and Technic series with robotic capabilites.

Architecture Tomorrow Based on lessons learned from the Apollo Lunar Module, designers have been developing groundbreaking pressurized vessels for the Moon and Mars, including prefabricated inflatable structures (above) and large planetary bases (left) assembled or constructed in-situ. Smart structures will detect, analyze, and repair any structural failures. Design solutions will include new lightweight and high-strength materials. Renderings: Courtesy of Nasa Johnson Space Center

The kit-of-parts theory was instrumental in the design and deployment of the ISS. Kriss Kennedy is a space architect at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. He was architect and systems engineering and integration lead for the design of TransHab, which was originally conceived to be a vehicle to transport people to and from Mars, but most recently was developed as a habitation module for the ISS, which has been in orbit, 220 nautical miles above Earth, with rotating crews since 2000.

The design team sought an alternative to traditional aluminum-shell architecture and developed TransHab as a hybrid structure—an inflatable fabric shell with a hard central structural core. (NASA has experimented with tensile fabric structures since the 1960s and has successfully tested several fabric structures. But when the textile industry came up with durable products such as Kevlar, Vectran, and Polybenzoxzzole [POB], NASA’s investigations intensified.)

According to Kennedy, “The spacecraft represents breakthroughs in the design of flexible, high-load, composite structures in the development of an optimized, independent pressure shell (using breakthroughs in inflatable and shielding technologies), and in the application of both systems in a single, reconfigurable habitat.” In essence, the result has all the packaging efficiencies of an inflatable structure with the advantages of a hard, load-bearing core, or, in other words, a reversal of the common exoskeleton structure to a more flexible endoskeleton one.