Glimpse of the future

Ever since our troglodytic ancestors emerged from their caves, mankind has been going up. From lowly mud huts to rearing skyscrapers. From balloon trips across the English Channel to setting foot on the Moon. “So it’s just a matter of time,” says space architect Masa Sono, “before we hit Mars and even go beyond the solar system. In my opinion, it’s inevitable.”

Sono is just one of the starry-eyed visionaries we meet in this mind-expanding book by Jonathan Morrison, The Times’ former architecture correspondent. How to Build a Space Station takes an elusive subject—the buildings that haven’t yet been built on other planets—and makes them as vivid as if their foundations were already planted in the extraterrestrial scree.

Morrison delivers chapters devoted to ancient architecture that was aligned with the stars, such as Stonehenge and the Caracol Observatory at Chichen Itza; to the lessons we’ve learnt from building research stations in the hostile climate of Antarctica; to a brief history of space exploration so far; and so on. In the process, he demonstrates the benefits of 18 years working for a broadsheet. That is, he knows how to build an argument, tell us what we need to be told, and throw in notes of dry humour, without getting in the way of his subject.

Space architecture, like all architecture, is defined by the resources at hand. Some propose designs that rely on using regolith—the top-layer of gravel and dust—as a building material. Sono’s vision for Mars involves spending two years harvesting water from its surface, and then building an ice palace. The beauty of it, he says, will “contribute to the mental well-being of the astronauts”. For Morrison, the sense of sublimity in something visually extraordinary is one of his three tests for designing in space, along with safety and sustainability.

There aren’t many reasons to be excited about the prospects for our species but one is the race to populate space. Nasa is building a station on the Moon in the next five years. Elon Musk says he’ll land a man on Mars in roughly that time frame. For many people, How to Build a Space Station will be the most compelling book about architecture they’ll ever read. For it doesn’t just take us through the fever dreams of sci-fi novelists. It gives us a vision—at once phantasmagorical and precisely concrete—of what the future is going to look like.