He's created everything from hotel and restaurant interiors to Olympic torches and outdoor gym equipment. Now, multitasking French designer Philippe Starck has his most otherworldly commission yet: the interior of a luxurious space station for tourists.
Space exploration company Axiom Space has announced it is launching its first space tourism programme in 2020, which will take its high-paying guests on expeditions to the International Space Station (ISS).
Starck was asked by Axiom to create interiors of the habitation module for the Axiom Space Station. Evoking "a comfortable and friendly egg" his design features softly-panelled walls covered with hundreds of nano-LEDs, which change colour in response to the moods and biorhythms of its inhabitants. Large windows will look out into Space.
"A space station is ruled by a fundamental law: zero gravity," said Starck. "Unlike terrestrial life constraints, life in space is a multi-directional freedom. My vision is to create a comfortable and friendly egg where walls are soft and in harmony with the movements of the human body in zero gravity.
"This dematerialisation shall be a first approach to infinity. The traveller should physically and mentally feel they are floating in the universe."
Houston-based Axiom has ambitious plans to build the world’s first, privately-funded commercial space station as an eventual replacement for ISS, hosting astronauts, researchers and space tourists.
