Panel Discussion

Immediately following the presentation of the papers in Session IAA.8.2., a Panel Discussion was held.  Organized by Richard Clar, from Art Technologies, the Panel Discussion was moderated by Larry Bell, Professor and Director of SICSA. (Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture)  Participating in the Panel Discussion were: Larry Bell, Gary Kitmacher, Ted Krueger, Mark Nelson, David Raitt, Lars Reuterswärd, and John Zukowsky.  The following Questions/Issues for the Panel Discussion were selected by the moderator, Larry Bell.
1. How do each of you define "space architecture"?
2. What are the most important roles/contributions of "space architects"?
3. What disciplines does "space architecture" encompass?
4. What key roles can/should architects play in interdisciplinary research/planning/design teams?
5. What are your individual backgrounds/experiences as they relate to "space architecture"

Please note:  For the panel discussion, Mark Nelson substituted for John Allen, who had to leave the session immediately following the presentation of his paper.  Lars Reuterswärd was invited to participate in the panel discussion based on his work with space architecture at Lund University in Sweden.

Following is an unedited transcript of the panel discussion:

BELL:             Richard asked me if I, Richard Clar, I don’t know if he’s ever introduced himself yet, we’ve been communicating with each other, asked if I would moderate his panel on space architecture.  And further asked me if I would submit some topical issues that we could discuss that might help structure our discussion a little bit.  Jack Frassanito and Jay Cory and some of us have been working with space structures and space systems and space habitats for lots of years, and I don’t think we spend a lot of time trying to define ourselves.  We’re just trying to, busy trying to make things happen and the term space architecture, I guess, has been born, and I think it makes a certain amount of sense.  We come to this with different perspectives about what it is we do and what it is space architecture’s all about.  And I think perhaps that’s worthy of some discussion.  Having been involved with this activity for more years than I want to admit to, I still, I’m kind of a little bit put off, you know, people say, “Well, space architecture.  You have an international center for space architecture, what in the world is space architecture?  Is that part of engineering?”  And I say, “no, not really.  Engineering is really part of space architecture, just as a transmission is part of an automobile.”  We hear of architecture in our news and in NASA and other organizations, but I think it’s used in a very nice way.  It doesn’t necessarily define people; it defines structure and organization.  We talk about the architecture of a mission, we talk about the architecture of a system, we talk about the architecture of a habitat.  And it seems then, architecture then, at least to me, is a kind of coherent logic system that makes environments and activities comprehensible, safe and hopefully enjoyable and productive.  So architecture, then, is that organizing logic.  And yes, I think architects who do that sort of thing, we do it in this building, the building, is part of a community which is part of a transportation infrastructure, and it has people who use it and it has a structure to hold it up and a structure to organize its functions, and it has materials, it has safety requirements.  One of the things I think that shows that architecture is really a profession is that we get sued along with everybody else.  So it must be relevant to the process.  And I think we have an important organizing role in the process.  And we see architecture from, I think from the standpoint of looking at broad plans for missions, for programs, unfortunately, the government programs, they usually don’t look very far forward, because it’s, it has to do with annual budget cycles.  But it’s as far forward and it’s the largest one of you want to imagine it is and it comes down to every level of planning and design and intellect.  Down to the design of microenvironments for the systems of furniture.  So I think architecture is really all those things.  In my view, and this is the view we bring to it, as I said, SICSA [Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture].   But I’d like to open up the discussion now, perhaps in terms of Gary, I think you have some notions about architecture, and then others do, as well, space architecture, and I wonder if you would press, just go around the table here and you might offer some ideas. 

KITMACHER:  I think this is something that NASA is not always successful in coming to grips with.  In fact, I just talked to Max Faget, for those of you who don’t know, would be one of the original designers of space craft going back to Mercury days, and he said, “You know, we really have never placed adequate emphasis on the man-machine interface, on the relationship between the human being and the environment in which he’s living in.”  That is why, in 1983, for instance, they created this man systems organization that we talked about, which, by the way, no longer exists.  But we define it very succinctly, very definitively, in terms of a specific set of subsystems, and I showed those earlier, fifteen subsystems that were associated with the living and working environment, the mechanisms, the attachments, that people needed in order to be able to use locomotion and so on.  We’ve tried to define it in an engineering sense, because our project management groups are established according to the actual functions, the actual design, shows up as a specific set of hardware that needs to be developed and managed and ultimately paid for, so it all relates to budget, also.  So I think from my perspective, as a project, program manager, that is how I see space architecture playing in, but the necessity to make sure that it relates all about the human in his working and living environment.  And I think as we get further along into plans for Mars, which all of us have, several of us have been involved in over the last several years, I think we’re going to have to reemphasize that, and it’s something that we’ve gotten a little bit away from in the last few years. 

BELL:             Okay.  All right.

REUTERSWÄRD:            Okay.  All right.  Well, maybe I’m the only one who is not native English speaking on this panel.  I might want to bring to your attention that where we have the concept of space architecture, I find it very problematic from my point of view, because when I, I always have said that I have one, one foot in sort of this aerospace architecture and in business, and one in the ordinary architecture practice and teaching.  And I will have colleagues telling me that space architecture is like any architecture that doesn’t deal with space.  So space has different connotations for different people.   The only thing that includes space architecture is when you use the word space architecture.  But I want a concept that is actually useful outside this little [inaudible] group, so I would prefer aerospace.  And then with that comes another part of the concept of architecture, I have an equal problem.  Architecture means building, or building structure, or something of that, from the beginning, but it’s not widely used by other, by other branches and sciences, or this conference is full of architecture, when it comes to systems in the end as have been mentioned here before.  So maybe in other words the problem with the word architecture is that when you speak to the people, laymen, about aerospace architecture, they think, “Oh, are you building buildings on Mars?”  No, we’re not, or in a sense, yes, but it’s not really building. Architecture is understood as a trade by the layman, right?  So it’s, I mean, ambiguous and being taken over by others.  I would suggest aerospace design, actually.  Design might include architectural design, but it might include interior design, or managing interface design, or display design, or whatever design.  I think that design is the generic word rather than architecture.  Architecture is related to structure, in a sense.  But design might encompass a broader understanding of the cause and effect.

BELL:             John?

ZUKOWSKY:  Well, I tend to agree with you about design, but I think that with

more of space design, for me, the optimal definition of architecture, what architects do is they manipulate and they create space.  And they do create structure, but they create space that you walk within somehow.  And there’s no space in space architecture, see, that’s one of the big problems that I see right now.  One day there will be space in space architecture, but I don’t think it’s there just yet, and I think of it more in terms of interior design, industrial design.  Because what people have been creating, they’ve been creating space vehicles.  They have not been creating space buildings yet.  Even though they may be designing, and one day, it will come.  I think that most of what we’re talking about, too, and you brought it up in your presentation, about mass production, somehow, and producing things.  And that relates to system design and system building things, and that also relates to vehicle design, if you will.  And that has never succeeded in this country, in terms of architecture, because architecture is treated more like a trade in this country.  And architects are treated like one step above tradesmen.  And they’re all unionized, as the trades are.  All you have to do is look through any city building codes and you realize how tough it is to do something on your own that don’t relate somehow to the trades and to tradesmen and to unionization.  And I come from a city where they have probably the toughest building codes in America, where you have to get a union worker to do things within your building.  You can’t do it yourself.  So that, in many cases, I see this, you know, and very different, I see architecture, but I think architecture is very different from what people think of in terms of aerospace, because I know architecture is used to define system, define systems, or I think of in terms of vehicles themselves as more of industrial design right now.  And one day that will change, but I think we’re many, many decades away from that change.

BELL:             David?

RAITT:            Thank you.  I can see we’re going to get very controversial here.  We’re all saying the thing, in a way, but different things in other ways.  Well, of course, I’m not an architect in this, although I have an interest in it, of course, but for me, architecture is sort of the big structures, if you like, the buildings, or in the case of space, space architecture, the, maybe the design and construction of space craft, space vehicles and habitats in space or on space planets, of course.  Now, I accept that it might be dealing with interior design.  That to me is not really architecture, but maybe that’s just me as a layman not knowing the terminology.  For instance, I can quite understand the design of a chair, for instance, but I would never call that architecture, so in that respect, one can say that there’s design.  Now, I’m not sure that we should go and call it aerospace design, because I think a lot of us in the space business got away from aerospace quite some time ago.  And that includes much more aeronautics and aviation for example, not just space of their kind of space, so I would not like to see it called aerospace design or aerospace architecture, I’ve said that aerospace design is something quite different.  But on the other hand, I would almost like to turn it on its head and say that, okay, it can be, it’s like the two are probable all the time.  In my paper, as well, if you say, and I’d be quite happy to send someone a copy if you see me afterwards, I do make the point which you just made, in fact, that space has always been used by architecture in a certain context, but it’s a different kind of space than what we understand of space, in space that you can always create space by having, it might only be a limited space, but you still have space that you utilize in different ways by maybe making, you know, foldaways, or whatever it might be.  But on the other hand, saying you can maybe turn it on its head, as I tried to do with my paper, perhaps say, “Okay, space architecture can also be applying materials and concepts and technologies that you go to creating space vehicles and space habitats for use on earth.  It’s still space architecture, but implied in a different way.

NELSON:       Well, I’m not an architect, and I’m not going to try to define architecture, but perhaps since I have to draw on my own experience, having lived in Biosphere II for two years and working with a team that has been very much involved with biological life support, what really strikes me is that what we’re aiming for, and I think Larry maybe said something about we haven’t really done space architecture because we haven’t built in space, but the reality of even the transitional space flight is that they’re different than ordinary buildings because people both live in them and their life support system is contained within them.  And I think if we have a future permanent and sustainable future in space, these systems are not only the life support bearing structures, but they’re going to be living systems, i.e., we’re going to be growing plants in them that are gonna be not just food, but regenerating water and air.  So the whole concept of space architecture and design, to me, is really exciting, because they are living systems, and John [John Allen], who gave the talk, who I’ve worked with for a few decades, we termed the concept “space biospheres.”  Once you leave this wonderful global biosphere, you’re in a structure which is your biosphere, which is your life support.  And so the integration of not only many disciplines, but in fact, things that we don’t think of as being in a house or a structure, is what’s really exciting.  When we started Biosphere II, and we had obviously a lot of NASA interest in it, their eyebrows really shot up, because they had been dealing only with very limited problems of the space weight constraints, getting something into spacecraft. But we made the point, this project is a little bit of a vision of what it might be like to be living in space.  And you might put up with getting on a 747 and flying across the ocean and spending fourteen, eighteen hours on some flights, but picture that as your world, and that’s your system that you’re going to live in, then the qualities of livability, comfort, beauty, aesthetics, and reliable support to produce that air and water become part of the equation.  

KRUEGER:    I think there’s too, too many problems.  One, I sat on the end, and so everybody else got to talk first and now I have to think of something.  And the other one, as I said, well, I’m not a space architect at the end of my talk, but I’m kind of on the edge already.  So what we’ve been talking about is primarily about kind of defining the term space architect, defining architecture, defining space and all that sort of stuff.  And like many beginnings of disciplines, there’s an interest in defining terms, and it interests other people, but it doesn’t interest me very much.  I don’t really have very much interesting to say about this, but I’ll keep talking, anyway.  So, if it’s not really about defining terms, then what could this really be about?  It seems to me that it’s about representing not a kind of trade organization, a professional interest, or something like that, but what is it that architects really do?  And I think that many different scales of what architects really do is important in space or on the earth or wherever we happen to be.  And the thinking that goes into an architecture, whether that’s an architecture of a house or an office building, or a vehicle, or a computer interface, or a chip, is important in this context, as well.  And that, for me, has to do with integration across many different things.  It has to do with specifically, and perhaps most importantly, about the way in which people are integrated with technical systems.  And that’s been at some level, kind of an underlying issue in architecture since people started burning dirt and stacking it up; something we’re not all that far advanced from these days.  In the sixties, there was a British Cybernetician, Gordon Pask, who worked at the Architectural Association in London, which is a very well-known architectural school, an important one in England, and in the sixties, British architecture was a very interesting kind of social scene with Archigram, walking cities and all kinds of forward looking, amazing and probably completely whacked out projects, a lot of them kind of like what you’ve been seeing today, to a certain extent.  In the past, the definition of architecture was that architecture was the structuring of systems for human habitation.  That’s a pretty open kind of idea about what architecture is, but it brings together both the technologies and the human beings, and that’s one thing that I think that we can retain in that term, which is important.  You can call it design, or you can call it architecture, or whatever, engineering, human factors, you can give it lots of different names, it doesn’t really matter.  What matters is the problem, the perspective, and what you can do about it. 

BELL:             The second item there, and these are all related, are what are important roles and contributions of quote “space architects,” and from my point of reference, if architecture is a holistic view of a planet or a system or an element, then the architect is the organizing force.  And certainly you use the word integration, and I think integrating, as well.  I think integration does not, also does not avoid the necessity for also the proposing involved integrating and the development of those systems.  And so I don't know of any other profession, you mentioned Max Faget, I had a conversation going with him today, Max is the Chief Engineer of the NASA Space Center, and most, if you ask most people who the five most influential people were in the first Mercury, Gemini, Apollo programs, he’d certainly be on everybody’s short list.  Max is an engineer, but he certainly did the architecture, of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, along with Caldwell Johnson and others.   So it’s not so much about the architect, but it’s about people who have the holistic understanding of the mission, the plan and the requirements.  So I think the role of anyone who calls himself a space architect is first of all, we bring, I think, with, to this role, experiences that are quite unique, because we deal with soft issues and hard issues.  We deal with abstract issues and very definitive issues.  We do design that comes down to the level of a connection or as large as a program.  And so this notion of definition of integration, I think, is something we carry, and we routinely do this.  We look at, we look at, I think, we look at through holistic system; we look at how all the parts fit together.  It’s like a hologram; all the parts have to mirror the larger picture.  I think this is what architects do, but I don’t think that we’re very effective with what we do if we don’t understand the environment that that system’s operating in.  I don’t think you can do architecture in space and not understand radiation.  I don’t think you can do architecture in space and not understand the effects of microgravity, and I’m not just talking about the things that are, the things we like to talk about.  It’s also the thing when you go from an artificial gravity world to a microgravity mode, and all of the dust comes up out of the floor and gets in people’s noses, I’m talking about certainly human factors, but in a larger sense, the planning of how many people are going on a mission, and how much you have to take along.  And you were mentioning the black water issue versus the gray water issues, and so on.  I think it’s all, these are all architectural decisions that are both technical and human, and I think we cut across those boundaries.  David, you made some, I think, interesting references too, to designing for extreme environments.  I think that the experiences we bring as architects, in particularly with space, transfer to other extreme environments, where people are living in isolating conditions, it’s difficult to transfer construction equipment to those sites, there’s, you know, there’s all kinds of issues that have to be confronted, and we can go on and on about those.  They apply to ocean environments, submersible environments, they apply to Antarctic work facilities, they apply to places where natural disasters have occurred, or a Chernobyl clean up, when necessary, you have to relocate people after hurricanes and earthquakes and so on.  And so I think the experience that we have in working with space and these extreme environments gives us a heightened recognition of the importance of design in all aspects.  And we’re talking about construction, we’re talking about human adaptation, we’re talking about safety, we’re talking about, you name it, we’re talking about it.  I don’t think there’s any issue that we can avoid dealing with.  Architects of this building, we didn’t design the HVAC system, but we better darn well know what it does and how to integrate it, and what, and how it’s, how to design around it, and so on.  My view of the role of the space architects is that we have the broad view, as well as I think the general understanding of the systems that we’re dealing with, and we have the ability to integrate those systems into something that works technologically and something that works humanistically.  Shall we go, let’s start from the other end.  You were the last one.

KRUEGER:    Well, I think, I think my comments kind of hit the second one to a certain extent, as well.  But it seems to me that one of the most important interests to protect within the space venue are these issues of human experience that I was talking about.  One is to, you know, sort of protect and make available this experience to people who are up there, and the other one is to kind of understand how to crack that experience so that they’re not too protected from the outside environment, and to understand also to some extent the tradeoffs, which is one of the things which are kind of the hallmark of architecture or design, architecture broadly defined or design issues, is that you always deal with conflict, or you always deal with kind of two requirements, which are difficult to resolve, and sort of makes it a design problem, in a way.  And so the desire to have a window and the knowledge of having radiation that comes through it, sort of is one of the aspects that an architect would bring to the table and understand.  And I’m not surprised that Lowey [Raymond Lowey] would be as an architect, but as a designer, he’s the one advocating that window that maybe does it all.  

NELSON:       I guess I’ll keep my comments short.  Obviously, the tradeoffs in, well, we know the famous form follows function and function follows form.  And whether you are on a planetary surface or microgravity, some of the environmental issues that you deal with are really quite challenging.  And then the tradeoffs are usually safety first and efficiency and function, beauty and enhancing, someone really made a wonderful point perhaps the gentleman to my left.  We want people in space to really have that experience, to have enough of an inner experience, that it’s going to be meaningful and communicable to the rest of the species.  So the aim is not to “shelter” them, but to protect them and facilitate their ability to have the full gamut of experience in that extreme environment.

BELL:             I might just make a comment responding to the window, the architects should know that the light coming from that window is unfiltered light in space, which means that, it means that the light coming in this window is at first very bright, or does that mean, there’s going to be reflections all over the place?  As Jack Frassanito mentioned in connection with the Skylab, the issue of reflective spray bright light.  The issue of people getting these sunburns big time quick and then ruining their retinas, once you understand the window and the light conditions, and now you need the shade for it, then you realize that that also affects all of the colors in the place.  The level of reflectives and then all the materials affects; it affects that.  The color you’re seeing things it’s going to be impacted both by the low power lighting systems you’re using, and the light that’s reflecting in those systems, which sets off a lot of consideration of all the human factors of what kind of colors to use and how many colors to use and the psychological impacts of colors, safety impacts of colors, so I’m all, I could go on, go on and talk about these things, but one thing on the window I’d like to mention is the impact on the mass of the system they’re having.  And so, so you have to justify them, you have to make an informed judgement, an informed case for those windows, like most other things because they cost you a lot of mass and clearly, we weigh their worth in terms of humanistic value and then also probably functional value.  But unless you can speak the language, and unless you can defend your positions, as someone who’s not just the person coming from the architectural practice, who’s going to be a space architect, but rather, understanding the environment you’re working with, I think that our contributions are not going to be very well received.

RAITT:            Yes, I mean, you make a lot of very valuable points of the one architect, certainly a traditionally trained architect is not going to have all those kind of things at his fingertips, so it requires a broad kind of education, issues presumably for architects that they plan to cover these kind of disciplines that they need to know about because, okay, they might know about radiation on the ground, but not necessarily in space.  And equally well, I think one of the most important roles that they might have to do is, is also to listen to what, what the crew, for instance, might have their own arguments to say that, “Well, it will cost you mass if you have a window.  It’ll affect this and affect that.”  But on the other hand, if that’s what the crew want to give themselves, a better outlook on life, shall we say, then that’s very important.  So I mean, I mean, one of the roles is obviously to create a kind of pleasant and safe, comfortable, convenient working and living environment for astronauts if we’re talking about living in space.  If I can just take one little bit further as well, and you mentioned Antarctica, and there’s the Concordia, that station down there at the moment.  But that’s a very miserable building and what they’re looking for is different kinds of structures and they’re coming to the space community, as well, space architects, if you like, to try and design a better, more inhabitable building, which will give them added functionality and safety requirements and make it more like home, as opposed to just a log hut in the middle of the ice for instance.  So they need certain features there, which space architects can contribute a great deal toward.

ZUKOWSKY:  Well, I think two, for me, two important points were brought out.  One is humanism, because architecture is one of the humanities.  So it’s not a science, technically speaking.  In fact in Socialist countries, it was always forced into a scientific world in terms of the universities, as opposed to being naturally thought of fine arts and humanities, so architects can bring that sense of humanism to a project and to a view, as opposed to an engineer, whose job is to bring something else to that project.   Another thing you mentioned was about a holistic view, and I would agree with you there.  That’s historically been the case with architects, that’s been their job.  So whether you like it or not, and you mentioned about the furniture, for instance, architects have always designed furniture back to antiquity.  And you have the more famous architects, let’s say like Frank Lloyd Wright, have always thought of that chair, and they’ve designed as being part of a bigger environment somehow, which goes, it doesn’t even end at the walls of Frank Lloyd Wright, it went out to nature, for that matter.  So an architect takes this holistic view that that’s their job, is to kind of organize and to shape, you know, humanity’s role within nature.  So I think that’s what architects, space architects can bring.

BELL:             Lars?

REUTERSWÄRD:  You’ve been thinking about the contribution of space architects, space architectural design.  I want to make another, take another angle on that subject.  I am feeling that what is it, the contribution that space architects and architecture can do to what becomes ordinary architecture?  I mean, if you go outside, which is one of my interests, what becomes evident for building on Mars goes back with the ESA and whatnot.  When you go out you just have to look out the window and you’ll see that the construction industry is a very messy and manual industry, it isn’t an industry, I dare say, it’s some kind of early industrial activity, it has happened very little in its development over the last century, almost.  And to some sense, to a certain extent, industrial design buildings were developed after the war here, in the US for example, and then fell down into nothing and now we’re back into manual construction.

Space, in space architecture, we have to deal with a third generation of structure.  Not the pre-industrial, not the industrial but the real industrial production modes when it comes to material used, how you put it together, how you proceed, the system analysis, related to it.  I mean, you could bring anything of that back into the construction industry.  And think about the third generation of construction I think that space architecture, and what they’re doing is making a real dent of the life.  I think the ESA program, in some aspects, did highlight that direction.  And I think more of that would be what space architecture should be about.

KITMACHER:  Well, I go back to the original question, I think about my actual job in the space station, the architects that I have worked with have really gone the gamut from the overall module, and the layout of the module, and how that module is meant to function down to the finer lines of each individual equipment graphs and how they need to appear so that they’re both functional as well as aesthetic.  The cupola has to be a certain number of functional and operational requirements, at the same time it’s going to be needed to play an important role in the astronaut’s off-duty recreation, so I think the space architects I’ve worked with have gone from very fine points of design to overall structure and design of the system as a whole. 

BELL:             Third point, what disciplines does space architecture encompass?  I’m really grateful for you guys mentioning construction and structure.  I know Jack will remember how much time we all spent often competing with each other, incidentally, with the design of interior architectures for the then planned space station, and how much time went into that rack and functional unit utility system design so that the racks could be pivoted out and you could get at the utility system with a gloved hand and do all the things you needed to do and so on.  But also, we worked with the, the overall architecture of the system, we worked with, you know, the design of the nose, the connecting nose, and how do those interfaces work, and we worked with whole plans of overall structure and configuration of the space station.  I think the notion of space architecture being limited to even modules or limited to subsystems and so on, clearly, that’s part of it.  But why in the world, I mean, how many of you who are architects in this room would want to say, “Well, we just do interiors.   And if you put two buildings together, that’s just too complicated for us, we just can’t quite handle that.  You know, we don’t know how to make something gravity gradient and stable and keep the sun and the solar rays without having to be shaded,” and so on.  I think that, you know, the notion that we deal with only with modules or elements or interiors, I think is a extremely self-limiting kind of role.  And I think when we look at the disciplines of space architecture, clearly, the conceptual phase of the total system and the total plan and how it relates to its environment is what we do.  Whether we’re delivering modules to Antarctica, whether we’re planning a facility under water, you think of the logistics how to get the ship to the facility, it’s all architecture.  Whether we want to fight over the battles, and say I’m an architect doing it, it’s got to be done by someone.  And I believe, and I have to believe, that if people with broad views that work with the big picture down, do it, it’s going to be a much more effective solution.  You left off last, so let’s go back around this way.  You’ve talked, you worked with some space architects, quote, space architects over the years [overtalk]…

KITMACHER:  Many of our space architects have not been trained as architects by training or discipline.  But the space architects that I’ve worked with have done, the design of the components, the hatches, the windows, the restraints, and the overall interior configurations, they’ve looked at the overall geometric relationship of windows and where they will be located and what kind of view they’re going to have, whether it be the earth or space crafts, people outside of the vehicle, so we’ve looked at a whole variety of disciplines.  And you look at that question from another perspective of we had a core group of people who were designing the architecture of the space station, the manner of modules in our space station, and although we were all space architects, in a sense, we had industrial designers and requirements writers and there wasn’t, we had to be of equal minds, and strategicians, we had to work on a strategy for how to sell our concept, because you always had other people going at us for why we couldn't do much better.  One of the cupola designs, for example, came out looking like Swiss cheese, because you could only have round windows.  And they could only be twelve inches in diameter, because physically, you just can’t create any other size window in space, that, you know, we would have to go make those kinds of mindsets amongst a whole variety of [inaudible] so a lot of us who were space architects, in a sense, brought a lot of kinds of disciplines to the project.

REUTERSWÄRD:  What more discipline does to space architecture.  But let me say I enjoyed what Ted Krueger said here that if you have an issue that you need to understand you can always throw in some students.  And they will come up with something.  I think that’s a brilliant way of looking at it, because that’s exactly what we are trying to do.  Now what kind of students are they?  They are mainly students of industrial design and students of architecture.  But indeed, in this room, we have students of electrical engineering, we have students of mechanical engineering, and others, and it feels when you throw in students, you don’t really need to look very closely over their teaching background.   It’s rather mindset you’re looking for.  Understanding both hardware and software, doing both the measure and the unmeasurement of wanting to put them together.  And I think space architecture is a good thing, because it really loosens up the old trade divisions, and we’re looking to a new way of looking at putting buildings together.  Buildings? Things together.  Is it a building or a thing?  I mean, if you talk about space architecture, you can say we build a building or not.  Yes, that’s true, but we also building industrial design item so I assume industrial design and architecture, and architecture and industrial design become in a sense the same thing and then it goes back to what I said about the third generation of construction. 

ZUKOWSKY:  Yeah, I think that in terms of what you said, one of the problems is the construction industry.  Because the construction industry has really not changed over the past century and more.  So that that the way you made buildings in the nineteenth century is essentially the way you make buildings today.  And there are lots of other factors involved with that, but I think that, that in a simple way, I think what architects, the greatest contribution I think  that architects can make is perhaps getting something from, let’s say, the space industry, and bringing it back into, back to Earth, in a sense and revitalizing the construction industry.  I don’t know if that can be done.  All the attempts in the past that have tried to have an impact on that have essentially failed, both in Europe and the United States, so I wish you well with your attempt.  I think probably there are historical reasons for this, I think unions play a big part, construction unions, and they’re very powerful, both in Europe and in the United States.  I know the Japanese are trying to do things to revolutionize the building industry.  They have Shimizu, the construction company whose tried to develop a smart system for building buildings, and Obayashi has too, in terms of the kind of automatic factory construction of high-rise buildings, in terms of welding sheets, and it’s a kind of thing that could never happen here, because of the unions.  So again, I don’t know if there would be problems with aerospace unions, for example, in terms of adapting things to the construction industry, and vice versa.  But I think that you brought up a very important point, that architecture itself is really not changing across the construction industry.  And I don’t know if that can change.

RAITT:            Just following on from that and just say a little bit more about Japan, which I’ve mentioned in my paper as well.  There they have sort of made it illegal, almost a crime, not to recycle the waste, and to use recycled materials in the construction industry.  And too, they’re using it for instance for flooring or decking, for walls and

such like, so they’re making strenuous attempts to actually do it.  And they have an information flow much better, and its all computerized the architect makes his plans in an electronic form say, then he passes them down the line to the building who does it so they can actually construct, I mean, a lot of companies, architectural companies over there now have mechanisms whereby they can get customized designs, in about forty or fifty modular constructions, I mean, you have a choice of say, forty or fifty homes, and within that then you can choose the customized design.  And they have that information system set up now that they can actually make the home and then in three days can actually erect it on-site in eight hours because it’s all modular.   And that’s, as you say, you won’t come to that here because of the unions.  In Europe, I’m not quite so sure that the unions are pretty strong.  But trying to get back to this topic, these other disciplines, I mean, we’ve covered quite a few of them, I suppose, but two that I should imagine that would have to be covered is sort of the economic side, the law side, those disciplines that the space architect really needs to get involved into a large extent.  They have to know how much things are going to cost and what the, what is likely to be the outcome, the litigation possibilities if the window cracks and something goes wrong and blows in or they get blinded or whatever.

NELSON:       Well, my take on this, perhaps, one is to remind you of my colleague’s point that what should be included basically is everything from the cosmic down to the, you know, the finite material level, the Noosphere, Geosphere, all the way up to the Cosmosphere.  And watching the designers of our closed systems.  I mean, one of the most fascinating things to me was not even so much Biosphere II after it was built, but the process of putting engineers and ecologists together produced incredible controversy, acrimony and incomprehension, because the engineers were speaking one language and coming from one platform, a way of seeing the world.  The ecologists were on such a different plane, they couldn’t even effectively insult each other.  They were just passing, and we watched that process to where they were both being challenged to do really remarkable things, and engineers actually finally made the breakthrough, really loved the idea that their engineering made total sense and was supporting a living system.  The ecologists had the experience of having to translate their needs so an engineer could try to accomplish that, of course, with the desires to working all these things into the architects’ larger sense, putting all those elements together.   So we were saying, you know, we need to cast a net as far as possible, and space architecture I don’t see it as being a union problem, it really needs to be in a different dimension than cranking out houses on earth. 

KRUEGER:    Well, again, I think we’ve covered this topic pretty well by the time we get down to my end of the table, so I’ll just throw up one comment, short comment, which is that there are many, many disciplines that could be integrated into this.  And I think that in, in general comes down to developing a certain kind of perspective and approaching problems in a certain way.  There may well be things that space architecture should encompass that we haven’t even come up with yet, because space architecture, if it’s started, is young, I think it probably hasn’t started a whole lot yet, certainly there’s hopes for it continuing well into the future.  One of the things that we know about the future is its relativity unpredictable and most of the problems in space architecture, and space probably haven’t come yet.  So we should leave whatever definition there is to space architecture open enough to be able to bring that sort of humanist perspective to a wide range of issues and problems.  It may be designing a software system, rather than dealing with some kind of construction issue.  If we’ve got the right perspective, it will all work out.

BELL:             I’d like to comment that I submit that space architecture or architecture in space is exactly the same as architecture anywhere else.  The role of the architects, is exactly the same as the role everywhere else.  And it really depends upon the allotted amount of responsibility that architects want to take for their activities.  We hosted a major conference at the University of Houston quite some number of years ago called International Design of Extreme Environments Assembly One.  We invited people from all over the world who were architects and engineers, medical doctors, and people, and Antarctic explorers, and god knows I can’t remember everyone.  We had every discipline, mining, the mining industry representative, the under water representative, polar programs, etcetera.   And it was very interdisciplinary, and we talked about the transfers of ideas and problems from between disciplines, from the medical to the planners to from one environment to another.  And was quite, I think, useful was the spin off, spin off, spin in type of phenomenon, I think was very, very worthwhile.  We had representatives from twelve different countries, and there were like five hundred people that attended, which I think was very exciting.  Hope we can do more.  And I don’t, I can’t think of a single one of those disciplines that was not relevant to architecture.  They’re all relevant, but I think the unique thing about the architects, is that the architects, again, are dealing with soft issues and hard issues and human issues and aesthetic issues, and technical issues.  And you can’t cop out and say, “Well, gee, I don’t deal with technical stuff, because I’m really kind of the artiste.”   You know, or, “I’m dealing with technical issues and I don’t have time to bother with humanistic issues.”  I think those are all cop-outs.  I think it’s incredibly interdisciplinary.  Now, I don’t know of any other profession who, see, the wonderful thing about being an architect is you can ask dumb questions.  You can go into an environment, you look at a complex problem, and start asking questions about it, because no one expects you to know all the answers.  And that’s a wonderful advantage that we have, to be able to walk in, ask dumb questions which are usually pretty profound, as it turns out, and be able to start to integrate and assimilate and order these things in a way that makes them comprehensible.  There’s something there that wasn’t there when you walked into the equation.  We have a space station now, and Gary made that comment, we didn’t know at the time whether to build a space operations center or a space scientific laboratory, and it’s there and we still don’t know what it is.  And then I can’t help but believe that had architects had a role in defining those applications and uses and requirements we’d have a very different kind of facility then we do today.  That’s my politically incorrect statement for today.  Thank you.  In conclusion, would you like to, is there anything, any follow up comments that anyone of you would like to make?  I think we’ve probably covered the waterfront pretty well.  Any questions from the group?  I realize it’s probably getting a little bit late.  Yes?

AUDIENCE:   I’m a student of architecture.  Can anyone of you tell me is there any way that space architecture is adapting or keeping up with progress that comes from new concepts in the ordinary architecture scene?  Anything being implemented to the progress in this discipline?

BELL:             Talking direct, direct transfers…?

AUDIENCE:   Spatial concepts, there is new technology being developed is this influencing the spatial, the concept of space in any way?

ZUKOWSKY:  I think it’s probably the other way around right now.  So that for instance, the CATIA or rapid prototyping, those types of things, in terms of computer termination of design forms, that’s coming from the aerospace industry more into architecture.  Well, it’s been industrial design for a while, and that’s moving more and more to determining architectural forms.  So it’s becoming almost trite now, those are design programs are being used and adapted.  They started out in aerospace engineering, and then they are now being adapted for architectural forms.  So I still think that the transfer of technology is to trickle down the other way around.

AUDIENCE:   The transfer of technology that, that’s for sure [overtalk].

ZUKOWSKY:  But also design forms, too, for instance.  CATIA is used to determine design forms in architecture. 

BELL:             Yeah, and building on that notion of CATIA.  CATIA was developed largely in the aircraft industry and used for aviation.  CATIA is used now for, among other things, when you build, when you assemble modules at the space station, and they’re, the systems, because they are coming from all over the countries, you never know if they are going to fit together until you get them into orbit.  One thing now, they try to test them on the ground, you know they, you have gravitational deflection and things and you’re not really sure if things link up and second of all, you’re not even sure if the bolt holes line up because the specs may be different from one to another, so they have people who go out using CATIA,  they do CATIA measurements of these systems.  They go to Russia and measure those interfaces, the USSR.  Also, people that are doing that are our graduates, they’re working for Boeing and they’re SICSA graduates that are using CATIA and they’re doing the integration work at space station.  I think probably more than actually saying, “This system is transferable from space to our environment on earth,” or more the reverse, I think that the knowledge base is being transferred from one to the other.  And sometimes these things are hard to quantify.  It’s hard to point to, it’s hard to say, “Well, this came from this environment.  This came from that environment, or that application.”  I think the greatest product we have is the product of education.  We are now starting a program thanks much to this congress to where our program students, [inaudible] not working with, because we have Internet working on we hope to establish a formal relationship with the University of Tokyo.  Hopefully we will begin working also with the University of Germany, with Hong Kong, where students can get together to work on common projects together.  We can do that now, I mean, the technology’s given us this wonderful tool.  And I think we can optimize it and really utilize it so that now we have the ability to really do integrated design, but its integrated internationally.  It’s integrated in terms of disciplinary, in terms of disciplines, it’s integrated.  We have these marvelous tools today and I think the challenge to our profession or professions is really whether we have the foresight to want to utilize them together. 

KRUEGER:    Can I try not to answer that question?  If I understand the nature of your question, it was really having to do with whether or not contemporary experiments in the composition of space are propagating back to the space architecture sector.  As an outsider and not being a space architect, I have no ability to answer that question, but I think the answer is no.  And I think that it might in the future, but I think it needs to be understood as a cycle, where as the kind of production technology, the ability to visualize and produce really complex forms in the terrestrial architectural culture resulted in completely new spatial configurations and experiments.  And my guess is that it hasn’t propagated back up into space architecture, where you’ll find something which is much more like, very much more a Cartesian spatial system.  But I think that it’s probably a matter of time before it comes back and does that.  The reason I think it will is that many of the things that keep a Cartesian space order have kept the Cartesian spatial order desirable are things like gravity and issues of orientation and things like that, which you don’t have as strongly in microgravity types of environments, so that there’s some probability that, that could occur.  But I think that you’ll find the application of design in space to be an extremely conservative environment in which to try to do design experiments.  I think if you looked at the design of, say the interior of space station done by somebody like Kalil [Michael Kalil], you’ll find some interesting designs, in terms of their formal characteristics, but they weren’t pursued, and probably won’t be for some time. 

REUTERSWÄRD:  Can I say a few words about that?  I understood the question as being what should contemporary architectures [inaudible] to space and, but the fact is, maybe I sort of in a field now my English could be not good enough.  I would have to say that architecture, generally speaking, still is an aesthetic art.  That there are efforts to go beyond that.  But they are still learning, infant, you could call them.  I would go to the art scene, contemporary art.  I mean, art is today not about painting a nice deer at sunset as it used to be.  It’s about something totally different.  It’s not about the sublime but rather we can call it, conceptual art.  I think that this kind of interpretation of reality that is done through art is much more relevant to the design of spaces, of relations, of life, of the planet of Mars, which has much more of a conceptual and philosophical implications than the maybe on beautifying the space station in a sense.  Did I make myself understood?

AUDIENCE:   Yes. 

BELL:             I want to thank you Richard, for inviting us today and giving us this opportunity.  I think, it’s been, from my standpoint, a very interesting discussion, and a very good use of the people.  So again, thank you for your consideration of us. 

CLAR:            Thank you, very much.

END

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