An Inflatable Living Concept

This paper discusses some considerations and concepts for the development of a design for an inflatable living concept. One of the aims of space programs is to create an habitat in which crew can live and work efficiently for longer and continuous periods. Even though astronauts are favourite in living a unique experience, they are forced to stay in an environment that deeply change their behaviour, their habits and their psycophysical balance. To improve this situation it is necessary to create an habitat possibly more comfortable than present modules, and that wouldn't turn upside down in every way the habits that man has acquired living on Earth. Present rigid modules are mainly designed for machines and equipment and only in later man is considered for their use. This fact leads designers to create excessively rational spaces that are of inferior quality and sacrificed in their volume. Nowadays this attitude is changing in favour of a larger sensibility for human needs. The project `Astrophytum' is a practical attempt to give an improvement in the way of living in space. The `Astrophytum' is an inflatable module with a rigid core that is meant to consider man as the center of all, as the beginning and as the end of designing. The starting point is that man has innumerable needs, physical and psycological, that we must satisfy with our project. Therefore we want to offer in our project more comfort, countermeasures for micro-g, collective and personal spaces. In other words, we want to offer an habitat that can be a `house' and that can offer an acceptable way of living to people that are not accustomed to living in hardship. In the same way we want to answer to the new need of placing in rigid modules space- tourists as well, becouse the module `Astrophytum' is only concieved as habitation.