Chase for Spacean architecture challenge for the future

Nejc Trošt

Nejc Trošt is an architect and designer who also works in the field of aerospace, art and technology. He completed his studies at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Ljubljana writing a thesis on future commercial space travel and its influence on the architecture discipline. Extreme environment design is one of his main fields of interest. During his studies, he was greatly involved in projects related to extreme living conditions and extreme spatial situations. In 2009 and 2010, he participated in expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic, where he and his colleagues were involved in the design of new environmentally friendly mobile living units. In 2008 he participated in weightless flights in Star City in Russia, where he helped set up and organize experimental art projects that were implemented in a weightless state inside airplane llyushin IL-76MDK. In the 30's parabolas, he and his team experienced an unforgettable 12 minutes of weightlessness. His consequent fascination with the experience of movement in weightless space lead him to devote the last two years of his study and research to spaceport architecture design. In 2010 he lived for 5 months in Japan where he worked in an architecture design office. He has been collaborating with intermedia artist Marko Peljhan since 2004 on many different projects and he is a co-founder of C-Astral unmanned aerial systems company.

Peter Gabrijelčič

Graduated in 1973 from the Faculty of Architecture (FA) in Ljubljana under the mentorship of prof. E. Ravnikar and in 1974 became assistant professor at the FA. In 1982 he was elected as president of the Architects' Society in Ljubljana. Three years later he obtained a master's degree in the Organization and Protection of Cultural Landscape, at the Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering in Ljubljana. Besides teaching and researching on spatial suburban space, he is theoretically and practically dedicated to architectural and urban design. In 1993 he became associate professor on the 'rural architecture' and 'landscaping and environmental protection' courses at the FA. Between 1987 and 1994 he was chair of the Department of Architecture at the Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering in Ljubljana and in 1995 he was elected as the dean of the FA. He was a visiting professor in Belgrade, Graz, Milan, Birmingham, New York, Venice and Oxford. He has given lectures in congresses in Slovenia and internationally (Graz, Brighton, Belgrade, Klagenfurt, Udine Venice, Milan, Oxford). In 1988 he received the Prešeren Award and acknowledgement of Salon architecture in Belgrade. According to Professor Florjančič, constructions of bridges architecturally designed by Peter Gabrijelčič, reveal more than two decades of experience that encompass interdisciplinary knowledge and individual creativity. He and his teams have formed a series of spatial stories, which have left a crucial mark on the Slovenian urban and rural environment.

John Zukowsky

Holds a doctorate in Art and Architectural History from the State University of New York at Binghamton. As curator of Architecture at the Art Institute of Chicago for more than twenty years, he has organized many highly acclaimed, award-winning exhibitions and written several books, including Chicago Architecture 1872-1992 (1987), Chicago Architecture and Design 1923-1993 (1993) and Building for Air Travel (1996). In recent years, he has increasingly specialized in architecture and design for the aerospace industry, authoring an article in Design Issues on Charles Butler and Uwe Schneider and a book about the work of John Frassanito titled Space Architecture (1999).

Jan Trošt

Born in 1978 in Šempeter, Nova Gorica, Slovenia, Jan Trošt currently lives and works in the capital Ljubljana. In 2006 he co-founded the architectural office STVAR. The most acclaimed projects designed by STVAR include the new Public Library in Celje and the design for the new Nordic Center in Planica. Between 2006 and 2008 he was involved in designing mobile research stations in Antarctica.

Marko Peljhan

Is a native of Slovenia and a theatre and radio director by profession, Peljhan founded the arts and technology organization Projekt Atol in the early 90's and cofounded one of the first media labs in Eastern Europe, LJUDMILA in 1995. In the same year, the founded the technology branch of Projekt Atol called PACT SYSTEMS where he developed the Global Positioning System based participatory networked mapping project, the Urban Colonization and Orientation Gear 144, one of the first works in the s.c. "locative media" genre. He has been working on the Makrolab, a project that focuses on telecommunications, migrations and weather systems research in an intersection of art and science from 1997-2007, the Interpolar Transnational Art Science Constellation during the International Polar Year (project 417) and is currently, together with Matthew Biederman, coordinating the Arctic Perspective Initiative art/science/tactical media project focused on the global significance of the Arctic geopolitical, natural and cultural spheres. Peljhan has also been the flight director of ten parabolic experimental flights (some of them presented in this book) in collaboration with the Microgravity Interdisciplinary Research initiative and the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre, creating conditions for artists to work in alternating gravity conditions. During the series of World Information.org projects, he has installed several communications mapping and interception systems and projects and his research led him to map the command and control communications networks and response during the Srebrenica genocide. He is the recipient of many prizes for his work, including the 2001 Golden Nica Prize at Ars Electronica together with Carsten Nicolai for their work, polar, and the UNESCO Digital Media Prize for Makrolab in 2004. He holds joint appointments with the Department of Art and the Media Arts & Technology graduate program at the University of California Santa Barbara and was appointed as Co-Director of the UC Institute for Research in the Arts in 2009, where he is coordinating the art/science Integrative methodologies initiative.

Špela Hudnik

Was born in 1968 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In 1995, she graduated at the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana. In 1996, she started her postgraduate program as an assistant at the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana. In 1997, she continued her postgraduate studies at the Akademie den bildenden Kunste in Vienna, with prof. Michaele Sorkin. From 1996 on, she has been working in partnership with Peter Vezjak, the founder of the Office for Architecture and Film - MONOCHROME. In 2000 she founded and organized Ljubljana's first International Architecture Biennale.

Burt Rutan

(Born 1943) is an American aerospace engineer noted for his originality in designing light, strong, unusual-looking, energy-efficient aircraft. He is famous for his design of the record-breaking Voyager, which was the first plane to fly around the world without stopping or refueling, and the sub-orbital spaceplane SpaceShipOne, which won the Ansari X Prize in 2004 for becoming the first privately funded spacecraft to enter the realm of space twice within a two week period. He has five aircraft on display in the National Air and Space Museum: SpaceShipOne, the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer, Voyager, Quickie, and the VariEze.

Brian Binnie

(Born 1959), an alumnus of Brown and Princeton Universities, served for 21 years in the U.S. Navy as a naval aviator flying the A-7 Corsair II, A-6 Intruder, F/A-18 Hornet, and AV- 8B Harrier II. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in 1988. Binnie also co-piloted the Atmospheric Test Vehicle of the Rotary Rocket. In 2006, he received an honorary degree from the University of Aberdeen. On December 17, 2003, the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers' first powered flight, Binnie piloted the first powered test flight of SpaceShipOne, flight 11P, which reached a top speed of Mach 1.2 and a height of 20.7 km. On October 4, 2004, he piloted SpaceShipOne's second Ansari X Prize flight, flight 17P, winning the X Prize and becoming the 435th person, and the first citizen of Scotland, to go into space. His flight, which peaked at 367,442 ft (69.6 mi; 112.0 km), set a winged aircraft altitude record, breaking the old record set by the North American X-15 in 1963. It also earned him the second set of Astronaut Wings to be given by the FAA for a flight aboard a privately-operated commercial spacecraft.

Yuri Ivanovich Malenchenko

(Colonel, Russian Air Force) Test Cosmonaut Instructor Of The YU.A. Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center.

Born December 22, 1961 in Svetlovodsk, Kirovograd Region, Ukraine, Malenchenko is a Colonel in the Russian Air Force and Test Cosmonaut Instructor Of The YU.A. Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. After graduation from the Military Aviation School, he served as a pilot, senior pilot and multi-ship flight lead from 1983 until 1987 in the Odessa Region. In 1987 he was selected as a cosmonaut and arrived at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center.

Malenchenko completed his first 126-day spaceflight between July 1 and November 4, 1994 on the Soyuz TM-14 vehicle and the Mir station (Mir-16 mission). He performed the first manual docking of the Mir station with the Progress M-24 vehicle. From October 1998 until September 2000, Malenchenko trained at NASA for a Shuttle spaceflight (2A, later 2A.2B). Malenchenko served on the crew of STS-106 preparing the ISS for the arrival of the first permanent crew. Yuri Malenchenko and Ed Lu performed a 6 hour and 14 minute space walk in order to connect power, data and communications cables to the newly arrived Zvezda Service Module and the Space Station. As of January 2001, he trained as a commander of the ISS 7 prime crew. Malenchenko completed his third spaceflight (with NASA astronaut Ed Lu) as an ISS 7 crew and Soyuz TMA commander. The flight lasted from April 26 till October 27, 2003; a total duration of 185 days. In October 2006, Malenchenko started training as an Expedition 16 flight engineer and Soyuz commander. On October 10, 2007, the Expedition-16 crew launched aboard a Soyuz TMA-11 spacecraft, docking with the orbiting space station on October 12, 2007. Malenchenko's tour of duty aboard the ISS totaled 192 days in space, returning to Earth on April 19, 2008 aboard the Soyuz TMA-11 spacecraft. Malenchenkov accumulated 514 days in space over 4 missions. Together with American astronaut Sunita Williams, (Slovene descent) he is preparing for his 5th flight next year.