Photograph by Will Michels

Three years ago, 1994 Rome Prize in Architecture winner Garrett Finney was happily designing furniture in New York City when a former classmate from the Yale School of Architecture called him to see if he was interested in becoming part of a new NASA program. With dreams of designing on Mars, he applied. Now senior architect at the Habitability Design Center of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, he works on designs for the Habitation Module of the International Space Station. A native of Philadelphia, Finney has spent time on this planet as a blacksmith, a carpenter—and he has designed not only furniture, but also houses and both residential and commercial interiors.
 

How is your job different from that of an “earthbound” architect?

Architects often say how difficult it is to be a designer in a developer’s world. As a designer in an engineer’s world, I contend with the fact that most of those creating the space station are primarily concerned with the function of critical systems and safety and not so much with the human interface. Everything at NASA is built to performance specifications, which require, basically, that everything function. What these specs leave out are the manner and ease of this function and, certainly, aesthetics. Together these are called “habitability” at NASA, and they are what I look out for and design to. The International Space Station (ISS) is first and foremost a place for science. To get the most out of this laboratory, we need a productive crew. As a happy crew is a productive crew, it therefore makes sense to pay closer attention to their surroundings than has been done previously.

We learn about these issues by studying our previous spaceflight experience, particularly Russia’s MIR program; talking with astronauts; and researching analogous situations, such as the environments of arctic research stations and submarines. To make their spaces more “habitable,” I have to take into consideration all the constraints that are part of space travel. These include how items are made and of what materials, issues of flammability and off-gassing, how they are packed and launched, the launch environment, the effects of radiation, life-cycle costs, and many others. Finally, the most important consideration is that astronauts are people and have normal peoplelike needs.