She has two degrees taken in record time, architecture and engineering, a doctorate from MIT MediaLab in Boston and is now also active at the Milan Polytechnic as a lecturer. And it has a message that communicates with passion and a lot of conviction. It is Valentina Sumini who on Wednesday 7 July became the «Ambassador of Italian Design for 2021», together with Flavio Manzoni, senior vice president of Ferrari Design, during an interesting conference held by the Italian Embassy in Washington. Two very different cases, in terms of experience, curriculum and even career age, of Italians who have reached excellence and the heights of creativity.
The race between the nations
Valentina Sumini is still very far from the «anta», despite her CV. And her message, of which she is very convinced, is that we are about to become a multi-planetary species, destined to expand into space: Moon and Mars for now, then we’ll see. We will not always and only stay on Earth, and she, with others, is preparing our homes to inhabit space, a difficult task that requires many different skills, skills and people all working in one direction. The thesis is suggestive and in his speech at the Washington conference he repeated it clearly: the evolution of our species leads us to conquer not only other continents, but also other nearby planets, it pushes us to undertake journeys. Since we are in the middle of Dante’s centenary, we could say a 4.0 re-edition of the famous “facts were not to live like brutes”. On the other hand, returning to the Moon and then arriving at Mars, not for a hit and run but to stay there and build stable human settlements, is now a project that many States work on, with their Space Agencies, with the USA and its allies on one side and China on the other. Russia, as it has been doing for months now, is still in the balance between the two and perhaps waiting for the best team or its greatest advantage.
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The competition between private individuals
But there is not only this clash or competition between states, because the acrobatic Elon Musk wants to arrive first on the red planet who will also be a strange character but has a lot of ability to sell and directs all his business towards this goal: to do cash to pay for the Mars Project. The network of thousands of microsatellites to get internet from space is just the latest of his brilliant and efficient gimmicks that will fill his bank accounts. The fundamental point from which to start, Sumini tells us, is to consider the difference between the environment in which we live and have evolved and the other two we consider. Here gravity is decisive, even our body is shaped by millennia and millennia of the action of gravity on our bones, venous system and balance. If we talk about the Moon and Mars instead, we go down to 1/6 for our satellite and about 1/3 for the Red Planet. A 60-pound person weighs only 10 on the Moon and about 20 on Mars, to get an idea. The problem, therefore, is not the constant vertical action of gravity, which in practice also pushes buildings downwards, but moves towards the problems given by the difference in temperature and atmospheric pressure and by the presence or absence of radiation harmful to the human being.
The hard life of architects … of spaces
Indeed, this was precisely the point from which Valentina Sumini started, given that, at the very close time of her graduation, she studied the action of the earthquake in buildings following the events in L’Aquila. No gravity as a fundamental factor, zero pressure on the Moon and low on Mars, whose atmosphere is very thin compared to ours, with values even 150 times lower. The changes in temperature are over one hundred degrees in the alternation of day and night and micrometeorites arrive undisturbed, and dangerous, on the ground: a further problem. The passage towards the external space designed by the space architects, who in fact also in this new guise are space designers and forgive each other the inevitable quarrel of words, see a multi-stage future, three different levels. The first is the space very close to us, a few hundred kilometers, almost a walk. It is there, 400 kilometers above the ground, that the International Space Station, ISS, orbits, the largest artifact ever designed and built in space, the only truly great spatial architecture in existence. Perhaps he will retire soon and Valentina Sumini participates in a project for the construction of a real hotel that could be built on the skeleton of some parts of the station itself, first of all keeping the beautiful window from which the astronauts, in moments of relaxation , look at what the first of them, Yuri Gagarin, 60 years ago called the “blue planet”. If we can give in to a little national pride, without sinning chauvinism, we remember that the stupendous structure with windows of the station, as well as 50% or more of the floor area of the ISS, is of Italian construction. Around this central nucleus, like Hotel Bellavista, 12 rooms have been designed for as many guests in the Marina project, which received the praise of NASA. The rooms, given the very low gravity in that situation, are made of super resistant fabric, but also very light that can arrive in orbit duly packaged, folding it several times on itself.
The “hotel” on the moon
Twelve inflatable modules – it would be better to say expandable – that are arranged like as many flower petals. It is a first step towards also a relative democratization of access to space, the space hotel may be ready relatively soon, but on the Moon and Mars it is another story. As the second most challenging passage we find the Moon, and there a region towards the south pole, where there is more water, more energy from the Sun and you can always see the Earth. One of the problems for the lunar settlements, compared to the Martian ones, is in fact that there is little water on our satellite, but above all it is present in very limited regions. Here, then, is the design of a real village made up of relatively small houses, each for four guests, also made with local materials, in particular the lunar regolith which lends itself well to being worked on site. A project to which the European Space Agency has also given its support.