“The Space Architect” Explores How One Space Engineer’s Ideas Could Transform Design on Earth

When Constance Adams—an architect who traded designing skyscrapers for designing spacecraft and prototypes for lunar and Martian habitats—texted filmmaker Beck Carpenter to let her know that her final days were approaching at the age of 53, Carpenter knew she had to document the space engineer’s ideas before it was too late. 

Adams, who had been diagnosed with colon cancer, had done “groundbreaking work” with NASA on a report that considered how humans could engineer life on Mars or the moon. But, she made it her life’s final mission to bring the meditations of a space colony back down to Earth, designing a better world for humans right here. Now, the details of Adams’ wish to apply space technologies on Earth are captured in The Space Architect, screening soon at the Architecture and Design Film Festival (ADFF) in Vancouver.

“She thought that we could use these [space] technologies and principles for humans to thrive in really hostile outer space environments [and] apply it to climate action here on Earth,” says Carpenter, who captured the final days of the late space engineer who passed away in 2018.

“She understood things about individual psychology, group psychology, but also biology and what the body would need as our resources become increasingly scarce.”

To make the film, Carpenter took all the money she had set aside to launch a podcast, hired a film crew in Houston and a NASA archivist to scan everything that could be found in Adams’ house—notebooks, scrapbooks, boxes upon boxes of photos and an unpublished book.

“Once I understood that all of the work that she had done as a contractor for NASA was about increasing our understanding of what it could mean to be human, for instance, creating a human colony on Mars, the story started to make sense for me,” the documentarian says.

“God is in the details says an architect, and the devil’s in the details says an engineer,” Carpenter quotes. “Adams embraced both, which makes her a unicorn.” 

The Space Architect will screen on the opening night as well as the final day of the five-day festival, which lands in Vancouver for its seventh year on November 5. ADFF will showcase 12 films “that insist architecture isn’t just a backdrop—it’s a protagonist” at Kitsilano’s Hollywood Theatre and Yaletown’s VIFF Centre.

Founded by New York architect Kyle Bergman, the festival explores themes of architecture and design through a curated program of films in six cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto and Mumbai. The Vancouver branch of the series is produced by Vancouver-based film producer Leah Mallen and former architect and owner of design destination Vancouver Special, Anne Pearson.

ADFF
November 5 – 9
Hollywood Theatre and VIFF Centre
Schedule and tickets here