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Galina Balashova
Space architect extraordinaire
Side elevation of the Mir space station. Galina Balashova, watercolour on paper, 1984. (All images © Galina Balashova Archive)
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Galina Balashova is the only woman in history to have been the main designer of three generations of spaceships. The 83 year-old’s desk in her apartment in Korolyov north-east of Moscow is littered with construction plans: Soyuz rockets, the space station Mir and the Buran shuttle – all proud testimonials to the technical space race between the USA and the USSR. Balashova’s responsibilities ranged from the ergonomic design of living and sleeping areas via comfortable cosmonaut seating to the design of space-proof toilet facilities. In later years she went on to design various branding elements such as medals and mission insignia.
Balashova’s cross-section of the command module of the Soyuz carrier rocket with its typical reclining seat forms still used today. Watercolour on paper, 1964.
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Philipp Meuser is an architect, author, journalist, publisher, curator, and photographer. Born in 1969, he studied architecture in Berlin and went on to work as a journalist for German architecture magazine Bauwelt and the radio station Westdeutscher Rundfunk. Together with his wife Natascha Meuser, he founded an architecture practice in 1996 and a publishing house, DOM publishers, in 2005. Since 2001 he has curated a number of architecture exhibitions, mainly in collaboration with the Goethe Institute and focusing predominantly on the former Soviet Union. He is currently working on a book about Galina Balashova to be published later this year.
Galina Balashova: Architect of the Soviet Space Program
Ed. Philipp Meuser
Published: Autumn 2014
Because her work as an employee of the space concern Energija was covered by strict secrecy regulations, her sensational designs for the “Soviet heroes” in Space remained anonymous. It was not until the break-up of the Soviet Union that her architect colleagues learned of her role in what must be one of the unusual architectural challenges: Balashova designed dwellings that were beyond the laws of gravity. For this talented artist, the goal that the Russian Constructivists agonised over – an architecture floating free above the ground – was everyday routine.
Technical drawing of the Buran shuttle, 1988. Balashova was responsible for the typographic design and other elements of the Soviet equivalent of the American space shuttle.
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