Architecture for Astronauts - An Activity based Approach
This book is about the interface between people, space and objects in an extraterrestrial environment.
The first part of this book introduces all relevant American and Russian realized extraterrestrial habitats: The Apollo Spacecraft and Lunar Module, the Space Shuttle Orbiter, and the Space Stations Salyut, Skylab, Mir, as well as the International Space Station. It provides an overview of the architecture and configuration, highlights specific issues concerning the interior layout and compares the spatial and time allocation of human activities. Drawings and diagrams facilitate comparison.
The main part of the book concentrates on the investigation of the relationship between the environment and its users. This method evaluates and summarizes all the selected habitats by means of the human activities (SLEEP, HYGIENE, FOOD, WORK and LEISURE) in relation to the characteristics of the built environment. In addition to analyzing the available data, it integrates the astronauts‘ personal experiences into the evaluation. The author conducted structured interviews with astronauts with a special focus on human activity.
The book confronts the findings from relevant literature and analysis – based on crew transcripts, spacecraft drawings and mission images – with the personal experiences of the users: the astronauts and cosmonauts. To facilitate orientation and to ease comparison with architectural drawings and diagrams each category was assigned a specific colour. Design directions for each category conclude each chapter.
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… The book is a lesson to all of us, nothing even the intricacies of habitation in space need
to be made over complex. The best teachers are those who can uncomplicate issues and Sandra
Häuplik-Meusburger has pioneered an excellent communication method with this book.
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… The result is that what could be a highly complex comparative task, the analysis of
habitation in different spacecraft, becomes surprisingly simple, graphically clear and
enjoyable for such a wide scan of information …
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… Architecture for Astronauts will be enjoyed by aspiring young and old people, students,
architects, designers and teachers of all disciplines and no doubt will be emulated by many
who are fascinated by the prospects of developing innovation for future compact living spaces
on earth.
Richard Horden (Foreword)
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