This week we’re joined by one of our favorite regulars, Fred Scharmen. Fred currently teaches architecture and urban design at Morgan State University's School of Architecture and Planning, and is the Principal and Co-Founder of The Working Group on Adaptive Systems. What brings him on today’s show is his just-released new book Space Settlements. The 400-page paperback contains a visually stunning collection of designs for space colonies from the mid-70’s, including iconic artwork and comparison studies of 20th and 21st century architecture projects. Our conversation talks about his research leading up to this book, the process of writing the book and the fascinating stories discovered along the way.
Listen to episode 143 of Archinect Sessions, “Space Settlements, with Fred Scharmen”.
4 Comments
Fred, congratulations on your book.
How do you see, if any, space settlements can influence us to live and build our cities in our present world? Are space settlements subconsciously earth settlements?
Romantic indeed. Thanks for that part of the conversation.
To Orhan's point, I'd argue that space settlements are conscious earth settlements.
Marc, we could be meaning the same thing.
Sub and conscious dance on a dime. Don Davis painting worries me. It is the postmortem simulacrum of the orbital future. All the seasons and the day and night takes a place in the same time and space. A town with a river of endless coves. Though, postmodern architecture survived the great escape. That part is funny.
Orhan, interesting considerations and references to postmodern architecture.
The NASA report is pretty serious in it's describing a spatial strategy for the toruses to prevent monotony. Then they build in monotony with the repetitive interior construction. Make it expansive, but make it cheap (eye roll).
On the flip side, Bezos celebrated the homogeneity of the space in his presentation/pitch, referring to the climate of a torus as "Maui on its best day." Incidentally, he's speaking to the exact people that that the original report was trying to avoid- (ad)venture capitalists.
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