Understanding Dwelling Beyond the Terrestrial

Master's Thesis
Rhode Island School of Design
2018

Approved by Master’s Examination Committee:

Markus Berger, Associate Professor Department of Interior Architecture Rhode Island School of Design

Stefano Corbo, Associate Professor Department of Interior Architecture Rhode Island School of Design

Jongwan Kwon, Critic Department of Interior Architecture Rhode Island School of Design

Acknowledgment:

Danielle R. Wood, Assistant Professor Space Enabled Research Group MIT Media Lab

Ernesto Aparicio, Critic Department of Graphic Design Rhode Island School of Design

Nick Heywood, Critic Department of Interior Architecture Rhode Island School of Design

Kaitlyn Palmer, Critic Department of Interior Architecture Rhode Island School of Design

Stephen Turner, Critic Department of Interior Architecture Rhode Island School of Design

One of the first places humans have lived outside of Earth is the International Space Station. However, the quality of life on the station is dehumanizing because it was designed to be a laboratory, not a dwelling. The condition of the existing space is monotonous and dooms residents to a boring and tedious life. The expression of beauty inherent in human nature is missing. The operation of the ISS as a space environment research laboratory is scheduled to end in 2024. This thesis explores how to utilize the adaptive reuse potential of the International Space Station to better understand human dwelling and how to develop more ideal human-spatial element interaction on the station by manipulating existing spatial qualities.

Over millennia an appreciation for beauty has become inherent to human nature, first developing from desirable traits for sexual selection. In every place we live, we look for beauty. Beauty is an inevitable element of human habitation. As humans expand beyond the terrestrial, the ability to express beauty in our surroundings must come with us. It is a part of our being. Beauty, which makes people create more expressive artifacts, is the richness of expression and sensorial experiences made visible. Dwelling includes various human actions such as sleeping, eating and moving. Of those, moving in microgravity functions in a completely different way compared to moving on Earth. This thesis will explore how interiority can impact special moments involving movement in microgravity for more diverse spatial experiences. In microgravity, people experience a dislocation from ordinal directions — there is no up and down, no reliable left and right. Every centimeter is accessible when you remove the limitation that is gravity. On the basis of these special experiences, adding structures creates diverse spatial experiences for different activities and enriches the space where movement occurs. These diverse spatial experiences also help solve muscle atrophy, a major challenge in microgravity. This study can be used as a reference for future studies on human dwelling in space and long-term missions in space.