David Nixon started as conventional architect but his field of interest turned towards topics related with the exploration of space. With Jan Kaplicky he founded the progressive architecture office future systems in London and from the late seventies on they could work on projects together with NASA. They defined themselves as an idea laboratory against dullness.
As a pioneer of space architecture David Nixon co-established the position of architects within the design process in the space industries that nowadays is far beyond just drawing and choosing the color for the walls but is integrated in the early concept stages… We talk about the problem of waste in the orbit and about the actual circumstances for the scene after the end of the space-shuttle flights
Today there is a very important lesson for terrestrial architecture to learn from architecture in space: how to seriously deal with recycling and the reuse of material in order to stop all the waste. David Nixon talks also about the uprising question of the future use of the ISS and about a book he has prepared on the design process of the international space station and that will hopefully be published soon.
I met him last november in Prague, in café Slavia just across street of the national theater, a day after the opening of his fascinating exhibition “Thresholds of Space” at the National Library of Technology.
an article on this topic published in QUER in german:
Ideenlabor gegen die Trägheit: Ein Gespräch mit Architekt David Nixon
