space03


Space Designer-Designed Birdhouses		INDEX
Space Designer-Designed Birdhouses

Phil Hawes

Pat Rawlings

Larry Bell
(USA)

Professor Larry Bell directs the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) and heads the Graduate Program in Experimental Architecture at the University of Houston. He cofounded two prominent aerospace corporations, Space Industries International and International Space Enterprises and received two of the highest honors awarded by the former USSR's Fedration of Astronautics and Cosmonautics.

Birdhouses are for birds that are free to use their wings:
- They come and go as they wish:
--- They gather their food and water from nature.
--- They teach their young to fly and be self sufficient.
--- They steer their courses of flight by the sun and stars above them.
- It is our human destiny to be like free birds --- not birds in cages:
--- To explore distant planets and learn to live on them self-sufficiently
--- To use wings that technology has given us to fly far beyound the birdhouse of Earch.

But for the present, the bird cages set only a few feet above our floor are all we experience:
--- The planets and stars outside appear only as lights in the ceiling; not as destinations to explore:
--- We We fool ourselves into believing that the birds in the cage are expressing their true nature and potential
- A bird cage in space reflects my perception of our present human condition in space:
--- The symbol of a journey for the human spirit which has barely begun.