Lecture by David Nixon

Architecture for Survival – the Challenge of Rising Sea Levels

In the frame of the Module Emerging Fields in Architecture (*), VUT Vienna

David Nixon is a British architect with a long-term interest in human spaceflight and space exploration. In the 1970s, he worked at the offices of Norman Foster, Richard Rogers and Nick Grimshaw in London and co-founded the office of Future Systems with Jan Kaplicky. He moved to California in 1980 and taught architecture at Southern California Institute of Architecture and UCLA. He became involved in the space field from 1985 onwards at SCI-Arc when he directed NASA-funded graduate research on full-scale prototype studies for the Space Station's habitation module. In the early 1990's he established his own office in Los Angeles and worked on a range of space projects for clients including NASA, ESA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, British Aerospace, Alenia Spazio, McDonnell Douglas, Spacehab, Kistler Aerospace Corporation and Rotary Rocket Company. In 2000 he formed a venture named Astrocourier to develop miniature spaceflight products. The first prototype – an iPhone-sized school experiment to boost interest in STEM subjects – was tested on the European/Russian Foton-3 space mission and the Airbus A310 Zero-G research aircraft in 2007. The first retrospective exhibition of his work entitled Thresholds of Space took place at the National Technical Library in Prague in 2014. He is author of the book International Space Station – Architecture Beyond Earth published in 2016.

The Module ‚Emerging Fields in Architecture` imparts knowledge about the latest research, design and development in research disciplines beyond mainstream architectural topics. In this module we encourage discussion and ideas that go radically beyond the traditional way of thinking. Our goal is to trigger a process of re-thinking and finding solutions to design challenges using an interdisciplinary approach. For the winterterm 2020, we will look for and trace the topic of ‘essentials’ from various angles throughout the module.

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