Viral Design: Conceptual Contributions to Architectural Attributes of Space Station Design

Abstract

This paper highlights a conceptual space architecture design project that was approached by advanced students of architecture. Two primary considerations of the project are discussed including: 1) the viral conceptual design contributions to the field of space architecture and 2) the educational value of space architecture to students of architecture. The notion of viral design is such that conceptual contributions are made from non-expert designers outside the professional norm and disseminate into the general discussion of space tourism and economically viable space station design. Viral design in this case is adapted from the concept of viral marketing where ideas spread on their own. The benefit to the space architecture community however lies beyond the fostered dissemination of these particular designs. The idea is that the conceptual designs would be fleshed out and revised by autonomous contributors supporting the effort. In this case, the initial contributions come from architectural design students who have schematically developed station designs with the larger goal that they provoke professionals actually working in the field. The design project itself primarily approached three concerns including: economic viability, human accommodation and construction feasibility. The students were guided with expertise in terms of engineering from outside professional consultants, but approached most design problems initially from an architectural perspective. Such an approach breaks the norm of a typical systems or trade analysis approach to confronting space architecture design problems. The second primary consideration of the project lies in the educational value of exposing students of architecture to problems of space architecture. Space architecture is an ideal test bed to explore many of the basic interfaces which concern humans in an optimized way. The design problem presented three principal areas of educational value including: 1) developing equilibrium between practical and livable concerns, 2) prioritizing spatial efficiency and optimization as well as 3) managing a mass balance of resources needed for sustaining life. All three of these issues are extremely important in their application to space architecture and are directly translatable to terrestrial applications of architectural design.