Barbara Imhof

While past visions of future cities were often inspired by space and exploration of the unknown, and thus based on science fiction, we propose future visions of the city based on science fact; that which is known and learned from our accu‐ mulated space exploration experience. Technological spin‐offs from space design could integrate into our daily...

The next steps for the expansion of the human presence in the solar system will be taken on the Moon. However, due to the low lunar gravity, the suspended dust generated when lunar rovers move across the lunar soil is a significant risk for lunar missions as it can affect the systems of the exploration vehicles. One solution to mitigate this proble...

The Global Exploration Strategy of the International Space Exploration Coordination Group (ISECG) describes a timeframe of 2020 and beyond with the ultimate aim to establish a human presence on Mars towards the 2040ies. The next steps lie on the Moon with a focus on the coming 10 years. Early lunar surface missions will establish a capability in su...

1970 erschien »Das Museum der Zukunft. 43 Beiträge zur Diskussion über die Zukunft des Museums« mit Vorstellungen zur erwarteten und erwünschten Entwicklung dieser Institution. 50 Jahre danach ist es Zeit für eine Revision: 43 neue Beiträge internationaler Autor*innen aus der Museumspraxis verschiedener Sparten, aus Theorie, Vermittlung, Kunst und...

The future of human space exploration is aimed at long-term missions to Moon and Mars. Currently, plans are elaborated by NASA, ESA, CNSA and others for a return to the lunar environment within the next decade as an intermediate step towards the goal of reaching the surface of Mars. For sustenance and crew comfort the crew of such long-duration mis...

Additive manufacturing (AM) is one of the most promising techniques for on-site manufacturing on extraterrestrial bodies. In this investigation, layerwise solar sintering under ambient and vacuum conditions targeting lunar exploration and a moon base was studied. A solar simulator was used in order to enable AM of interlockable building elements ou...

Additive manufacturing (AM) is one of the most promising techniques for on-site manufacturing on extraterrestrial bodies. In this investigation, layerwise solar sintering under ambient and vacuum conditions targeting lunar exploration and a moon base was studied. A solar simulator was used in order to enable AM of interlockable building elements ou...

One of the greatest risks humanity faces is Climate Change. Evidence on sea-level rise and extreme weather events supports that climate systems are changing as well as our relationship to climate. Changes are taking place at the global and national level, on built structures at the city and community level, yet we construct an understanding of clim...

Imagine evolving swarms of robots interacting and by doing so reshaping and cultivating our habitat. This habitat could be here on Earth, on a distant planet or moon, or within a self-contained spacecraft. What would these robots look like and made of what type of material? What kind of information, hardware or software? What are the architectural...

Vital natural resources are depleting and being wasted in today’s industrialized and agricultural processes. Critical planetary boundaries’ have been transgressed with major effects on biodiversity loss and climate change. Necessary elements for our daily life such as nitrogen and phosphorus, are being lost through household wastewater. The EU-fund...

Future missions to the Moon will require the utilization of the local resources in order to make them affordable. The EU-funded RegoLight project advances existing 3D printing technologies and methodologies for the purpose of shaping lunar regolith, a readily available resource on the Moons surface, through the means of concentrated sunlight that s...

Within the European MOONWALK Project, a Human Machine Interface (HMI) prototype has been developed, with the objective of simulating and improving the exchange of information of the Extravehicular (EV) Crew with Mission Control during planetary Extravehicular Activities (EVAs), while imitating the limited situational awareness and increased autonom...

When an article about one of the largest biospheric projects entitled “Noah’s Ark—The Sequel” (Reingold 1990) appeared in September 1990, the author Edwin Reingold could not anticipate that Biosphere 2 would become the proof that constructing a closed ecology is one of the toughest challenges for humankind and for long-term spaceflight. It is not c...

In the last few years, different concepts have been investigated in the context of building human-tended bases in extra-terrestrial environments through ISRU. NASA has conducted a 3D printed habitat challenge in 2015, which put international focus on the topic. Amongst microwave sintering, contour crafting and other Additive Manufacturing (AM) tech...

Water is ubiquitous and essential, yet we struggle to understand it from a systems perspective. Water is a terrestrial closed-loop system involving individuals, communities, cities and geographies, and as such, might it serve as a metaphor for sustainable design? We identify four locations and frame their connections through water and society. This...

Presentation of the MOONWALK Project during the ESA ASTRA conference in Leiden, Netherlands. The MOONWALK project had as objective to develop simulations for human and robotic missions to Moon and Mars, including astronaut-robot cooperation schèmes.

This paper discusses the approach of biomimetic design in architecture applied to the theme of growth in biology by taking two exemplary research projects at the intersection of arts and sciences. The first project, ‘Biornametics’, dealt with patterns from nature; the second project ‘Growing as Building (GrAB)’ took on biological growth as a specif...

Natural lunar analogues are terrestrial analogue environments like deserts, craters or other surfaces on Earth which are representative for terrain, soil, etc. of the Moon. Artificial lunar analogues are human-made terrestrial facilities and/or tools that provide conditions that are analogue to specific conditions on the Moon or to conditions in hu...

We detail the overall structural architecture for a Class III Mars habitat intended for human exploration missions, constructed utilizing a robust and simple \textit{in-situ} resource utilization (ISRU) approach we have termed `lava casting'. The habitat concept is based on a hybrid approach, with structural elements of a central habitat arriving f...

The book explores different pathways of experimenting with biology and architecture in the new field of Living Architecture. It takes architectural visions of a selfgrowing house and looks at growth patterns and dynamics from nature to apply them to architectural visions. The book presents ideas, approaches and concepts for grown structures develop...

a step further into the future of human space exploration Executive Study MOONWALK

This paper presents preliminary results of the qualification and testing campaign for the Self Deployable Habitat for Extreme Environments (SHEE). Developed under a three year European Commission FP7 grant, the SHEE is a rigid segment deployable habitat test bed designed for use in space analogous environments. The objective of the SHEE project wa...

In light of upcoming plans for human Moon/Mars missions, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and its partners are developing a greenhouse to be tested at the German Neumayer station III in Antarctica: the EDEN ISS project. One critical component of future human exploration of unknown worlds will be the supply of edible food for crewmembers. Thus, dev...

UR FUTURE IS CAST IN LAVA 3D-printed Mars habitat using a novel construction technique called ‘lava-casting’. The habitat is made up of one inflatable dome brought from Earth, for critical crew areas, connected to a series of smaller domes, housing laboratory space and working areas. LavaHive incorporates recycled components as a key element of t...

In view of lunar exploration, which is foreseen to be one of the next steps in human space exploration, Lunar Analogues are and will continue to be powerful tools to support the development, demonstration and validation of new technologies and operational concepts. Furthermore Lunar Analogues will serve as an environment for Astronaut training, Beh...

This paper presents preliminary results of the qualification and testing campaign for the Self Deployable Habitat for Extreme Environments (SHEE). Developed under a three year European Commission FP7 grant, the SHEE is a rigid segment deployable habitat test bed designed for use in space analogous environments. The objective of the SHEE project is...

Plant cultivation in large-scale closed environments is challenging and several key technologies necessary for space-based plant production are not yet space-qualified or remain in early stages of development. The EDEN ISS project foresees development and demonstration of higher plant cultivation technologies, suitable for future deployment on the...

As future planetary missions evolve from local exploration in the vicinity of the lander (up to a few km) to more regional operations (with a reach beyond tens of km), the need for a safe and efficient traverse will be greater than ever. To address these challenges, the EU FP7 FASTER project [1] has tackled for the past 4 years the Forward Acquisit...

SPACESHIP ECOLOGIES The study and translation of ancient Greek texts reveals that the whole Greek world and philosophy was reflected in their language and in the meaning of the words which sometimes had more holistic meanings than one would associate with them today. To define the spaceship ecologies the authors would like to introduce “oikos”, the...

Technological spin-offs from space design integrate seamlessly into our daily lives but the confined conditions of extraterrestrial shuttles seldom serve as Earthly inspiration. Space entrepreneur Susmita Mohanty profers that living conditions in outer space can inform and exchange with cramped environments down below, such as the worker-housing an...

In 2014, the CAAS Collective, in collaboration with Swiss student Rüede Anne-Marlene, explored the “city” as a “spaceship” metaphor using graphical representations of information (data). They attempted to map terrestrial tendencies, human density, consumption and waste. This CAAS journal presents four sets of visual data for comparing and contrasti...

Robots are likely to play an important part as support for future human exploration missions on Mars and Moon. Robotic assistants have the potential to improve the efficiency and safety of human surface activities. The control of robots in space is non-trivial because astronauts are limited in their movements by a bulky spacesuit and missing or red...

The arts offer alternative insights into reality, which are explored by science in general, and broadened by the activities conducted by the European Space Agency [4] and other space agencies. Similar to the way the members of ESA are ambassadors for spaceflight and science, artists and cultural professionals are ambassadors for human expression, e...

The Self-deployable Habitat for Extreme Environments (SHEE) project (www.shee.eu) is developing a test bed to evaluate the potential of changeable-geometry architectures in both space and terrestrial environments. Funded by the European Commission under an FP7 contract, the three year development program which started in 2013 will produce a habitat...

The MOONWALK project (http://www.projectmoonwalk.net/) is a three year cooperative R&D project funded by the European Commission under the FP7 programme. The goal of the project is to develop and test technologies and training procedures for astronaut-robot cooperation in earth-analogue environments as it applies to Extra-Vehicular Activities (EVA)...

While past visions of future cities were often inspired by space and exploration of the unknown, and thus based in science fiction, we propose future visions of the city based in science fact; that which is known and learned from our accumulated space exploration experience. Technological spin-offs from space design could integrate into our daily l...

Human interaction with technology has been a central characteristic of space architecture. Both from the user's and designer's angle, crewed space-based platforms are essentially habitable machine systems, while the ground-segment infrastructure is permeated with information systems. From a system-of-systems perspective, the planning and utilisatio...

The Self-deployable Habitat for Extreme Environments (SHEE) presents a unique platform for multidisciplinary analog research and mission simulation for future planetary exploration. This project is currently under development through a grant from the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Union (EU-FP 7) by a large interdisciplinary team of ex...

Moonwalk is a 3-year cooperative research and development (R&D) project funded by the European Commission. The goal of the project is to develop and test technologies and training procedures for astronaut-robot cooperation in earth-analogue environments as it applies to Extra-Vehicular Activities (EVA) on Moon and Mars. Surface EVA will primarily i...

The paper discusses six case studies of sleeping bag design, one used by astronauts onboard the Space Shuttle and another currently being used on the ISS, which was developed by a Russian company. Two inflatable designs, one by Wubbo Ockels for ESA and one by the University of Technology in Munich in cooperation with NASA are chosen as case studies...

What is the architect doing in the jungle? How can architects and natural scientists immerge into a fruitful dialogue to generate new insights for cross-disciplinary innovation? The book contributes to the current discussion of arts-based research taking the example of the interdisciplinary research project BIORNAMETICS – Architecture Defined By Na...

Self-deployable autonomous habitats are needed, in particular, in extreme environments where there is no infrastructure and heavy machinery available. Self-deployable habitats will mitigate construction safety risks and reduce costs due to their subsystems coupling and compact transportation size. Robotic construction integrated into architecture i...

A formal discussion about the ornament might have started with Owen Jones work “The Grammar of Ornament” at the end of the 19th century and Jones becoming a well-known English architect and stylist ‘pro ornament’: “From universal testimony of travellers it would appear, that there is scarcely a people, in however early a stage of civilization, with...

The project BIORNAMETICS was a one-year project, scheduled from May 2010 to September 2011. The Austrian Science Fund FWF selected the project together with five others from the 57 entries applying for funding in the arts-based research programme PEEK in 2009.

Until now, human factors in the discipline that is concerned with the interactions between humans and other elements of a system have not been taken into account appropriately, which is why the level of performance on space stations, from the Mir to the current International Space Station, is reportedly low. As underlined by the European Cooperatio...

In light of the renewed international interest in lunar exploration, including plans for setting up a permanent human outpost on the Moon, the need for next generation earth-based human space mission simulators has become inevitable and urgent. These simulators have been shown to be of great value for medical, physiological, psychological, biologic...

Whether a cellular phone, a laptop computer or a spacecraft there are always two sides to an interface: a system side and a human side, and thus two sets of goals must be defined. In spaceflight, these two set of goals are defined for the technical system and the human system within its full scope. The human dimension is vital for a human mission i...

The study Lunar exploration architecture—deployable structures for a lunar base was performed within the Alcatel Alenia Space “Lunar Exploration Architecture” study for the European Space Agency. The purpose of the study was to investigate bionic concepts applicable to deployable structures and to interpret the findings for possible implementation...

This paper discusses the architectural design project “Transformation Structure Space”, which was carried out at the Department of Building Construction HB2 in 2004. The goal of the study was to find innovative solutions for space system design through the application of bionic (biomimetic) approaches. Using specific research both fields as the fou...

This paper discusses the findings for [Interior] configuration options, habitability and architectural aspects of a first human spacecraft to Mars.In 2003 the space architecture office LIQUIFER was invited by the European Space Agency's (ESA) AURORA Program committee to consult the scientists and engineers from the European Space and Technology Cen...

This paper is second in a series, to establish a comprehensive, credible and usable framework to guide the design and evaluation of Planetary Mission Simulators. This framework consists of a set of tools, referred to as Framework Elements (FE). The FE format comprises checklists, matrices, and schematics. The framework is intended for use by engine...

Copyright © 2 ABSTRACT Engineers, designers and architects often look to nature for inspiration. Nature has perfected its designs through billions of years of evolution, so mimicking its creations is a sure way of producing technologies that are both efficient and reliable. There is nothing new about borrowing design ideas from nature, but now this...

This paper presents some of the results of the Lunar Base Design Workshop, held in Noordwijk, The Netherlands from 10-21 June 2002. Six groups designed six different lunar bases according to six different scenario's. The main findings have to do with the horizontal and vertical movement in 1/6G in shirt sleeve environment. Different concepts for in...

This paper focuses on the actual case studies - scenarios of the Lunar Base Design And Operation Study I (LB-DAOS I) for further lunar exploration. The study started with the Lunar Base Design Workshop, a two-week programme conducted in cooperation with ESA-ESTEC, held from June 10-21, 2002. Initially three scenarios considered as the most relevant...

The work described in this paper was done under ESA and Thales Alenia Space contract in the frame of the Analysis of Surface Architecture for European Space Exploration -Element Design. Future manned space missions to the Moon or to Mars will require a vehicle for transporting astronauts in a controlled and protected environment and in relative com...