Mark Garcia

Image: International Space Station Model Photograph (approaching spacecraft/astronaut view from below). National Space Centre, Leicester, UK. Nikon Z7. Copyright Mark Garcia 2021

Research

Subject

The 21st Century Posthuman Architectural Design of Spacecraft and Spaceships

Primary and secondary supervisors

Abstract

This PhD details the possible posthuman futures of the architectural design of spaceships and spacecraft. The ultimate goal of this research is to maximise and accelerate innovation in the architectural design of spacecraft and spaceships to catalyse real-world knowledge exchanges between posthuman spaceship design and the design of more sustainable, resilient and robust, conventional and vernacular terrestrial architectural design. This thesis deploys a multidisciplinary and mixed methodology which is being applied to investigate the architectural design value and techno-aesthetic transfer possibilities of significant precedents and case-studies from a range of both extant and planned human and robotic/non-human spacecraft. The core of this case-study analysis is of two of most representative, popular and extensively designed case studies of this architectural type/typology - the International Space Station and Star Trek’s U.S.S. Enterprise.

Validated and tested through NASA and ESA data-base led technical surveys, the specific results of this research have identified viable new posthumanising design and infrastructural systems (architectural and interiors) as well as individual innovative details and other parts as candidates for significantly innovative recombinations for the design future spacecraft. The final results of this concluding section speculate on how these posthumanising systems and parts could and will be utilised to improve the architectural design of spacecraft spaces - expanding space architectural research from ‘habitability’ and ‘adaptation’ to ‘designed co-evolution’ for new, longer-term and future spacecraft purposes, missions and mission types.

This fundamental research demonstrates how, through 21st century posthuman spaceship and spacecraft design, with their essential focus on the design research fundamentals of gravity, technology, function and use, are of intrinsic and indispensable value and impact to thriving and not just surviving in space. This is of urgency not just to architectural design in general but to new knowledge of and design invention for nothing less than space itself.

The deliverables, results and outputs of this PhD include a strategic research agenda, a series of large-scale diagrams, articles, book chapters, books, lectures, workshops, exhibitions and a TV series.

Biography

Mark is a researcher, writer, curator, photographer and academic. He teaches on Architectural Design MArch at the Bartlett and in the Department of the History of Art at UCL. He has worked for Branson Coates Architecture and Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.

Mark has held academic posts at Oxford University and at the RCA (London) where he was Head of Research in the Department of Architecture and the Research Co-ordinator in the Department of Industrial Design Engineering. He has lectured in Japan, Switzerland, Ireland, Germany, EU and the US. Mark is guest-editor of 'Architextiles AD', 'Patterns of Architecture AD', 'Future Details of Architecture AD' as well as editor of 'The Diagrams of Architecture' (Wiley). His 2017 solo show of photographs at the University of Cornell (School of Art, Architecture and Planning) focused on details of the models of Zaha Hadid.

He is currently researching the design of David Lynch’s ‘Twin Peaks’ and guest-editing his forthcoming ‘Posthuman Architectures AD’.