Extreme Living

What happens when a space architecture concept has to become something that can actually be built, launched, operated, maintained, and sustained?

In this episode of Extreme Living, I speak with space architect and industrial designer Frank Eichstadt, who was also one of my professors when I studied space architecture at the University of Houston. Frank’s career has spanned architecture, industrial design, engineering, integration, testing, and human spaceflight.

In this episode, we discuss:

• What happens when space architecture moves from concept to reality
• Designing within mass, power, cost, schedule, and engineering constraints
• Lessons from Frank’s work on the Enterprise module
• How microgravity changes the fundamentals of spatial design
• Designing for professional astronauts versus commercial visitors
• Why adaptability may be essential to future commercial space stations
• Logistics, maintenance, sustainment, and the full life of a habitat
• What submarines, hospitals, and other extreme environments can teach space architecture
• Cross pollination between healthcare design and space habitats
• Frank’s advice for future space architects

At the center of the conversation is one recurring idea: look at the whole picture. A habitat is not just an interior. It is part of a larger system that has to support people before, during, and after the mission.

In this episode of Extreme Living, Anchal speaks with Professor Charles Spence, an experimental psychologist at the University of Oxford whose work explores multisensory perception and how our senses shape the way we experience the world.

The conversation looks at architecture beyond the eye. How do sound, smell, touch, taste, light, atmosphere, and sensory control shape life in confined and extreme environments such as space stations, submarines, hospitals, prisons, and Antarctic research bases?

Charles discusses why architecture has often prioritized the visual, what happens when environments become sensory monotonous, and how lack of control over sound, smell, light, and privacy can affect wellbeing.

The episode also explores flavor perception in space, sonic seasoning, sensory agency, windows, natural light, and what healthcare design might teach future space habitats.

Chapters

• The Power of Multisensory Design
• Confinement and Psychological Effects
• Why Architecture Is Dominated by the Eye
• Sensory Deprivation in Modern Buildings
• Sound, Taste, and Perception
• Food, Flavor, and Dining in Extreme Environments
• Sensory Complaints in Hotels and Built Environments
• Sensory Agency and Neurodiversity
• Windows, Natural Light, and Space Habitats
• What Healthcare and Space Design Can Learn From Each Other

Papers Discussed

Senses of Place: Architectural Design for the Multisensory Mind
https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-020-00243-4

Factors Affecting Flavor Perception in Space: Does the Spacecraft Environment Influence Food Intake by Astronauts?
https://doi.org/10.1111/1541-4337.12633

In this episode of Extreme Living, I speak with Dr. Sheyna Gifford, an aerospace medicine physician, analog astronaut, and science communicator.

In 2015, Sheyna entered a 1,200-square-foot dome on the slope of Mauna Loa in Hawaii with five crewmates for a 365-day Mars analog mission called HI-SEAS IV. Inside the habitat, there was no fresh air, no real-time contact with the outside world, limited food variety, and no simple way to step away from the people around her.

What makes Sheyna’s perspective especially unique is that she was both living the mission and caring for the crew. She served as the crew’s health and safety officer while also documenting the experience as a crew journalist.

We talk about what isolation does to the body and mind, how stress shows up in confined environments, why control and choice matter, what future habitats need beyond medical equipment, and what happens when people return to normal life after a year of extreme living.

Sheyna also discusses the TIME article she wrote during COVID-19, drawing lessons from her Mars analog experience for people suddenly living through isolation on Earth.

TIME article: https://time.com/5814128/tips-mars-quarantined-earthlings/

Extreme Living explores how people live, heal, and adapt in confined and extreme environments from space habitats and polar stations to hospitals, prisons, and other places where design meets the edge of human endurance.

What does it take to deliver real healthcare inside a system built for control?

Dave Redemske is an architect and healthcare planner with 30+ years of experience designing at the intersection nobody talks about correctional facilities and clinical care. He's walked through mental health crisis rooms that would break a stable mind. He's fought for exam rooms that look like clinics, not cages. And he's made the case that design isn't decoration, it's treatment.

In this episode, we get into:

• Why prisons became America's default mental health system
• The triangle room under a staircase that says everything about what's wrong
• How trauma-responsive design is quietly changing corrections
• What the Netherlands gets right that the US refuses to try
• The real question: When they walk out, are they better or worse than when they came in?

This one will change how you see a prison. And maybe, what you think people inside one deserve.

In this episode of Extreme Living, Anchal speaks with space architect Michael Morris, whose work sits at the intersection of human habitation and space exploration.

Michael has spent nearly two decades working with NASA on the design of space habitats and is best known for the iconic Mars Ice House concept, a project that challenged the assumption that Martian habitats must be buried underground by proposing light, transparency, and psychological well-being as essential parts of safety.

Together, we explore what it means to design for places where there are no site visits, no traditional user groups, and no familiar precedent. Michael shares how architects can contribute to NASA’s engineering-led culture through listening, lateral thinking, and human-centered design. We discuss daylight, plants, color, views, privacy, conflict, sensory monotony, analog environments, and the question of how future habitats can support people not just as operators, but as human beings.

The conversation moves from Mars and the Moon to Earth-based lessons from HI-SEAS, Antarctic research stations, underwater habitats, and healthcare environments, asking how extreme environments can teach us to design better spaces here on Earth.

At its core, this episode asks: what does it really mean to live well in space?

Reference mentioned: NASA’s Moon-to-Mars Planetary Autonomous Construction Technology Project: Overview and Status by Raymond G. Clinton, Jr. et al. The paper discusses MMPACT, NASA’s effort to develop autonomous construction capabilities for lunar infrastructure, including landing pads, habitats, shelters, roadways, berms, and blast shields using lunar regolith-based materials.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20220013524

What does it take to design buildings for one of the most extreme environments on Earth and where people may live in isolation for months at a time?

In this episode of Extreme Living, I speak with architect Hugh Broughton, whose work has helped redefine how we design research stations in Antarctica. Best known for the Halley VI Research Station, Hugh’s work marked a shift from buildings designed purely for survival toward environments that consider long-term human habitability and wellbeing.

• We explore how architecture responds when failure is not an option, what it means to design on a moving ice shelf, and how logistics, prefabrication, and environmental constraints reshape the entire design process.

• The conversation also looks beyond engineering challenges to the human experience of confinement and isolation. From sensory deprivation to the importance of small spatial gestures like light, smell, circulation, and quiet spaces, Hugh explains how architecture can support both community and individual resilience in places where the interior effectively becomes an entire world.

• Together, we discuss what lessons polar architecture might offer other extreme environments from space missions to other forms of long-duration isolation.

About the guest

Hugh Broughton is an architect whose work focuses on designing buildings for some of the most remote and environmentally demanding places on Earth. As founder of Hugh Broughton Architects, he has been involved in the design of several polar research stations, including the Halley VI Research Station in Antarctica, a project that helped redefine how architecture supports long-term human habitation in extreme environments.

His work explores the intersection of climate, logistics, and human experience, developing buildings that must function reliably in isolation while supporting the wellbeing of the people who live and work within them.

Learn more about Hugh’s work:

https://www.hbarchitects.co.uk⁠

What happens when confinement isn’t engineered, labeled, or even recognized as such?

• In this episode of Extreme Living, I am joined by Astrid Lange to explore non-engineered confinement, psychological and cultural conditions that demand sustained adaptation without formal structure or support systems.

• Drawing from Astrid’s experience living and working abroad as an English Language Fellow in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, an assignment that had more in common with the Peace Corps than a traditional expat workplace. The conversation examines how identity, perception, and behavior shift when familiar anchors disappear. Together, we discuss cognitive overload, language as a form of confinement, and the ways people build their own coping strategies when psychological scaffolding is removed.

Astrid Lange focuses on bilingualism, communicative arts, and collaboration in education. She has worked as a bilingual/EFL teacher and administrator across K–12 and university settings in the United States, Morocco, South Korea, Guatemala, and Brazil. She holds two master’s degrees from Texas A&M University and finished two cycles as English Language Fellow in Brazil. She is also a writer, performer, and founder of Houston’s only bilingual improvisation comedy troupe, ¡No Me Digas!.

This episode continues Extreme Living’s investigation into how humans adapt in extreme environments, not only physical ones, but psychological as well.

Living Underwater — Subsea Habitats with Roger Garcia

What does it actually mean to live underwater?

• In this episode of Extreme Living, I’m joined by Roger Garcia, who has spent more than two decades working in underwater human habitation first as an aquanaut living inside subsea habitats, and later leading operations that support long-duration missions.

Roger is the former Operations Director of the Aquarius Reef Base and a retired U.S. Navy Deep Sea Diver and Marine Corps Combat Diver. During his 23 years with the Aquarius program, he supported and supervised nearly 100 saturation missions, including scientific research projects, defense initiatives, and NASA’s NEEMO astronaut training analogs.

Roger currently serves as Director of Habitat Operations at DEEP, where he is helping shape the next generation of subsea habitats designed for long-term human presence.

Our conversation explores what makes underwater environments challenging beyond engineering and safety. We talk about:

• Confinement by choice,
• The difference between livable and habitable spaces,
• Why the hardest moments are often the time between the work, and how comfort and human interaction become critical to long-term performance.

We also discuss why decades of lived experience underwater represent a valuable, and often overlooked, knowledge base, how subsea habitats have shaped spaceflight training, and how companies like DEEP are re-imagining underwater habitats as places for sustained human presence.

In this episode of Extreme Living, Anchal speaks with Andrzej Stewart — an analog astronaut, mission operations specialist, and aerospace engineer who has lived inside long-duration Mars simulation habitats and asteroid analog missions for NASA-related research.

Andrzej shares firsthand insights into:

• Managing interpersonal conflict inside small, high-stakes crews

• Communicating with Earth under multi-minute communication delays

• Why analog missions are essential for future human space exploration

• How environmental design shapes mood, resilience, and mental health

• Balancing technical precision with emotional well-being in isolation

• The challenges of reintegrating into everyday life after mission confinement

Together, they explore what extreme environments — from Mars analog habitats to deep-space simulations — can teach us about human behavior, design, adaptation, and the psychology of isolation.

Guest link:

Solar System Ambassador profile — https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/ambassadors/1973/

Recorded as part of Extreme Living — a design inquiry into human isolation and adaptation.

Learn more: https://extreme-living.com

Inquiries: [email protected]

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A glimpse into Extreme Living — a design inquiry into human isolation, exploring how people live, heal, and adapt in confined or extreme environments - from space stations and Antarctic labs to cancer wards and prisons.

Hosted by Anchal, a licensed architect based in New York.