Hotels in Zero-G

[Image: "Zero-Gravity Design" at the Domus Academy in Milan].

Given all the justifiable excitement in the past few days about the successful launch of SpaceX, Milan's Domus Academy is hosting a rather well-timed two-week design intensive this summer called "Zero-Gravity Design: Products & Microenvironments for Orbiting Hotels."

It runs from July 2-13, 2012, and will be taught by "aerospace entrepreneur" Susmita Mohanty.

From the studio brief:

As the race to open up the space frontier to tourists revs up, so will opportunities for designers and architects. The participants of this course will design products and microenvironments for living aboard future Orbiting Hotels. The Space Tourists, will have to, after all, eat, drink, sleep, cleanse, exercise, work, play, improvise, relax, move, stay still, contemplate, congregate, seek privacy and look out of the window. These everyday tasks, and more, open up an infinite range of design possibilities.

Participants will be challenged to "come up with creative antidotes for isolation, confinement, boredom, sensory deprivation, bone-muscle atrophy, as well as social-psychological-and-cultural stressors characteristic of living in cramped spaces where privacy is limited and so are resources."

Perhaps, best of all, "this course will groom designers and architects to work for space tourism companies."

[Image: "Zero-Gravity Design" at the Domus Academy in Milan].

More information is available at the Domus Academy website.

(Thanks to Rajeev Thakker for the tip!)