The extra-vehicular activity (EVA) spacesuit is a man made atmosphere that protects the occupant from the harmful effects of an otherwise hostile environ-ment. It is a unique garment in that it also contains facilities to maintains the funda-mental bodily functions required for com-fortable extended use. When described thusly it may come as no surprise that the EVA spacesuit, as a concept (which came from such humble beginnings as the modified deep sea diving suit), would eventually go on to inspire a small group of avant garde architects and theoreti-cal urbanists to introduce radical ideas driven by an increasingly technologically aware society and an incredibly volatile political environment.

The A7L suit (Plate 1), the first EVA suit to step foot on the moon, had to go through a stagger-ing amount of systematic revisions. From repurposed navy diving gear to the unlikely result of, bra and girdle manufacturer, ILC Industries’ winning design which lead to its final point of departure from the Apollo 11 lunar module. The dissimilarities between deep space and deep sea are surprisingly few given that you are dealing with an inhospitable environment with limited manoeuvrability and the obvious requirements for pressurisation and oxygenation. It is for these reasons that the apparently disparate schools of Navy and Air Force came together in the development of the Mark I flight suit creating the first artificial environment for flights in the low atmosphere jet streams, 30 000 - 50 000 ft above the earth. The suit was developed by the B F Goodrich company, who would then go on to develop the Mark suits into those used in the first of the manned space flights, the Gemini missions. At the time the established method of EVA suit construction was a hard shell exoskeleton as a result movement was limited and the weight of the device made it cumbersome.

However ILC Industries, a latex company that was initially involved in the production of only the soft parts of the suits, would go onto design the revolutionary ‘soft’ suit that would become the A7L. The overall power of ILCs design was its ability to be manoeuvred in an environment that with one incorrect twist one can float helplessly into outer space . This was achieved by layering 21 mate-rials one over the other creating an impermeable membrane that would protect the wearer from the zero atmosphere environment outside and keep the artificially manufactured internal environment inside. But perhaps the most important function of the suit was to allow for the untethered movement upon the moons surface, as a result all life support systems (which were previously attached by an

Developed by: ILC Industries

Materials: Suit-21 Layers of materials including Teflon coated Beta cloth, Mylar, Duran, Kapton, Chromel R woven stainless steel

Helmet-Ultraviolet stabalized polycarbonate and outer polysulpone 24 karat gold coating

A7L SPACESUIT

Plate 1 1969 Apollo 11 A7L Spacesuit worn by Buzz Aldrin

Plate 2 NY Times Diagram Outlining the inner workings of the A7L spacesuit

Plate 4 Performance Heart City - The White Suit 1969 by Coop Plate 3 LIFE Magazine 14 September 1959 featuring the Gemini 7

Plate 5 Three Configurations Cushicle Suitaloon 1969 by Archigram

Himmelblau

umbilical cord connected to the ship) were inbuilt into the technological fabric of the suit (see Plate 2). These systems were well documented in the social presses at the time, with Life magazine re-ceiving exclusive rights to print all personal details of the celebrity astronauts (Plate 3), not the least subject of interest would of course be what they would wear when they set foot on the alien surface.

A direct result of these articles affirming these alien modes of existence would be the im-plementation of these ideas into the urban milieu. Architectural collectives Archigram and Coop Himmelb(l)au, are probably most notable for there observations pertaining to the artificial environ-ments posited by space flight and untethered lunar extra-vehicular activity. Archigram takes the concept of an insular suited system to the ends of its theoretical line of thinking with the Cushicle Suitaloon project (Plate 5),

They then go on to suggest that all activities can occur within the comfort of ones Suitaloon: entertat-inment, via the interior projection; driving, via additional chassis; even intercourse, via the complex entanglement of two Suitaloons. From an architectural perspective we can clearly see that the A7L space suit could easily be adapted to that fundamental thought of modernist architecture as posed by its greatest thinker, Le Corbusier, that is, to be “a machine for living”. Archigram has developed their hallmark technologic with a tongue in cheek transhumanism that brings new meaning to Le Corbusier’s words. Elsewhere the symbolic meaning of the space race and the technologies it es-poused were far more grave and a somewhat sarcastic approach became more pertinant.

Coop Himmelblau, a Vienna based architectural collective, along with other Viennese counter-parts (namely Haus Rucker Co) represented something more of a “druggy escapist utopia”(Dyckhoff 2008). Their late 60s pieces represented an awareness of but ambivalence toward the external on-goings of a society that was approaching rupture. Perhaps they were more acutely aware of the fact that the “astronauts and cosmonauts served as surrogates for the competing political and economic … battlefields of the Cold War” (Needel 1998) giving way to their more dissociative approach. The installation, Heart City – The White Suit (bearing direct correlation to the A7L, see Plate 5), the suit acts as a barrier within which the observer stimulates the exhibition space. Sensors detect the heart beat, breath and beta waves of the observer which then transpose this data into light. In essence it captures the observers emotional content and relays a synaesthesic response, at once reflective and isolating. A poignant impression of the cold war environment.

The A7L spacesuit has from such humble beginnings through such immense revision be-come symbol for so much more than mere technical latex. From technology to politics it immedi-ately became the image of the future as well as symbol for the present’s problems. The hopes and aspirations for a Modern society were reflected in the inner mechanics of the suit and the resolute triumph of lunar exploration. Whilst, the divide between politics and the people were emphasised as the spectacle presupposed the problem, and thus the suit became symbol for the dislocation of man against his environment. It cannot be denied as a symbol and an achievement the A7L has had a profound effect on our conception of how we can interact, in radically new ways, with oursurroundings.

The cushicle is an invention that enables a man to carry a complete environment on his back. It inflates out when needed. It is a complete nomadic unit - and it is fully serviced.It enables an explorer, wanderer or other itinerant to have a high standard of comfort with a minimum effort. (Cook, Chalk, Crompton, Greene, Herron, Webb 1972)