This TED Talk features Interplanetary Architect Xavier de Castellier, recorded live at TEDx Levin, 2016.

I missed a bit about 12 years old when my dad took me to an exhibition on space.

Not far from here, in Brussels.

And the year was about, I think it was 1988, so it was the end of the Cold War.

There was a bit of an upmanship going on between the Americans and the Russians bringing bits to that exhibition.

NASA brought a big blow-up space shuttle.

But the Russians, they brought a mere space station. It was actually the

training module, and you could go inside and check it all out. There was a real thing, where the

buttons were, where the wires were, where the astronauts were eating, where they were working.

And when I came home, the first thing I did, I started drawing spaceships. Now, these

weren't science fiction spaceships. No, they were actually technical drawings. They were

sections, cutaway sections of what kind of structure would be made out of, where the wires

were, where the screws were.

So, unfortunately, I didn't become a space engineer, but I didn't become an architect.

These are some of the projects that have been involved with over the last decade and a half.

All these projects are quite different, quite different shapes,

and it is because they built different different environments. They have different constraints. And I think design becomes really

interesting when you get really harsh constraints. Now, these projects have been all over the world.

A few years ago, this map wasn't good enough.

It was too small.

We had to add this one.

Because we were going to do a project on the moon for the European Space Agency.

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