Publisher
il Saggiatore
Publication date
21 aprile 2023
Genre
Non-fiction
Pages
200
A journey out of Earth’s orbit to discover how we will live on other planets.
“Design is the lighthouse, the container, and the content of a story that takes us beyond the boundaries of our world as we know it, deep into the unknown, into the universe, into the infinite.”
Cities of the Universe reveals for the first time how we will live in space and what shape our lives will take in a more sustainable and inclusive extraterrestrial dimension.
Annalisa Dominoni and Benedetto Quaquaro are professors at the Milan Polytechnic and creators of the first and only course on the planet in Space Design, supported by the European Space Agency (ESA). The pair takes us into the homes of today’s astronauts to project us into those we will inhabit in the future on other galaxies: from the International Space Station to the first settlements on the Moon, space tourism to projects for living on Mars and beyond.
These pages will answer questions about how the issues of habitability and well-being in space have been addressed, what the most surprising differences of living in reduced gravity environments are, how our everyday life will change in the future, what alterations our bodies will undergo by responding to physical laws different from those on Earth, and how science fiction has anticipated scenarios that have since come true.
The book sketches a future “Interplanetary Renaissance” through new tools and visual languages that guide the transition to other planets. Design emerges as a bridge between science and beauty, even in space, so that technology and aesthetics can coexist.
ANNALISA DOMINONI e BENEDETTO QUAQUARO are architects, designers, and experts in architecture and design for space and extreme environments. They teach at the Milan Polytechnic School of Design, where they created in 2017 Space4InspirAction, the first and only space architecture and design course in the world, supported by the European Space Agency (ESA).
