Author Description

This Architectural Design title poses a unique challenge to architects. It incites designers to respond to the limitless potential that outer space presents at the beginning of the third millennium. No longer man's final frontier restricted to the activities of government space agencies, the extraterrestial environment is soon to be opened up by private enterprises and individuals. Featured work, by those such as WAT&G, Shimizu Systems and the X-Prize contenders, prove that entrepreneurial companies are already producing independent pioneering designs for the first tourists. Contributing specialists from a wide range of disciplines endorse these developments: the engineer David Ashford describes the viability of developing commercial passenger planes for space tourism within decades and the economist Patrick Collins analyses the commercial rewards to be reaped from outer space. The social, legal and scientific effects of creating what could ultimately be an unlimited ecological zone beyond Earth are explored further. Just how far reaching the effects will be for the practice of architecture is suggested both by John Zukowsky's comprehensive overview of space architecture and Ted Krueger, who organised an architectural workshop with NASA. This is not, however, to overlook space's artistic impact on architectural design in the latter 20th century. Space Architecture also recognises the seductive power that high-technology space imagery has had for contemporary architects and their debt to film and TV, as well as cult figures such as David Bowie.