“Jory had told the truth; he had constructed – not this world – but the world, or rather its

phantasmagoric counterpart, of their own time. Decomposition back to these forms was not of

his doing; they happened despite his efforts. These are natural atavisms, Joe realized,

happening mechanically as Jory’s strength wanes. As the boy says, it’s an enormous effort” .

Philip K. Dick ‐ UBIK (1969)

INTRODUCTION

What we explore in this studio, Spaceship Architecture, is not Sci‐Fi architecture. Yet it

derives from the latter its speculative nature, its imaginative concepts, futuristic science and

technology imagery. It stops short from inheriting its futuristic settings. Instead it aims to

become them. Spaceship Architecture is built architecture. It is found in realized projects that

manage to become a setting of their own in an otherwise established and consistent built

environment. They create a parallel world which no one expects to become the new norm,

but everyone aspires to enter.

COURSE OBJECTIVES + AIMS

The analysis of make‐belief drawings and models of Sci‐Fi spaceships, space‐station, extraterrestrial

world and anything that can be perceived as architecture, leaves architects

always in absence of interior information. Designs fall short from resolving interior space as

that is not required either for filming or animation. Textures, materials, openings, lights etc

very rarely correspond with the interior, nor have any continuance. Interior scenes are most

of the time filmed on separately designed sets (or digital sets) which are made in a way to

correlate the ‘atmosphere’ of the exterior. But they rarely correspond in what architects

would expect, in an interior program vs exterior façade system. The depth of a sci‐fi digital

or physical model is virtually non‐existent, and thus useless in architectural spatial terms.

This discrepancy in Sci‐Fi architecture we investigate and try to see why it often gets lost

when architectural intents aiming to realize qualities, textures, materials and sci‐fi

atmosphere, fail to implement them as intended.