Why You Should Use Architecture as Inspiration for Sci-Fi Ship Design

Spacedock delves into architecture as an inspiration for sci-fi spacecraft design.

THE SOJOURN - AN ORIGINAL SCI-FI AUDIO DRAMA:

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[Spacedock]

The Sojourn on Spotify (Only in certain regions):

[mitwhitgaming]

One thing that I always love in sci-fi is when they have a continuous shot that follows the characters through the ship, giving you a clear picture of how it is layed out.
I always love the slice of life sorta stuff, what is actually like aboard ship.

[andyb]

WH40K has some of my favorite spaceship designs, from the elegant-yet-brutal flying Cathedrals of the Imperium and forces of Chaos, to the ramshackle and comical "this really shouldn't work" jerry-rigged Ork ships. Star Wars also has some stunning designs, especially in the Imperial capital ships (the Executor class being my all-time favorite space warship). Colin Cantwell could really do some incredible things with a simple triangle.

[DrakeAurum]

The Alliance capital ships in Firefly take this to an extreme, being basically just a set of modern skyscrapers on a platform with engines.

[opensketchbook]

That Holly Jencka art at the end is from the upcoming RPG "Torchship", an exploration game which combines soft sci-fi, Star Trek like space exploration with hard sci-fi concepts and dangers. Holly's an amazing artist and its incredible to have her on the team bringing it to life.

[lostmarble]

I love that imperium ships in 40k have battering rams on them. It's got to be the silliest thing to put on a space ship but damn does it look cool

[The_Lone_Aesir]

I like how in "Space above and beyond" the Human Capital ships were basically futuristic aircraft carriers, and the Hammerhead fighters drew inspiration from, well hammerheads.

[Ushio]

Using naval traditions makes a lot of sense since during the age of exploration sailing ships could take years for a one way journey even with lots of stops on the way (discovering strange new worlds and new civilisations) Even crossing just the Atlantic in the 1840's could take over 50 days while today it's 6-7 hours on an airliner.

So going back to look at how people coped on incredibly long voyages on tightly packed ships for up to 2 months at a time is a good basis for sci-fi ships that can travel between stars.

[Teekanic]

There's a particular Union ship in Firefly that I always thought looked like a city in space. I love it because it looks so practical and different from other ships in sci-fi, and even the series.

[deusexaethera]

"The Eiffel Tower is damn near a spaceship already."

Well, I'm never going to look at the Eiffel Tower the same way ever again.

[d.robertdigman]

I loved the fact that HMS Camden Lock from the British series Hyperdrive was basically the British Telecom Tower with engines attached!

[DycuswasHere]

Might as well throw in the Castle of Lions from Voltron: Legendary Defenders. A bit of a surprise when we found out it was really a rocket ship in the first season but the more you saw it the more sense a castle would make as a ship.

[lukasvillar]

The OG Iserlohn Fortress is beautiful... It is like a castle inside a silver snow globe in space.

Also, we need a video about the ships from Legend of the Galactic Heroes universe ASAP, the Flagschiff Brünhild needs some love.

[Omnomface]

Regarding brutalist designs, i can easily point to EVE Online's Caldari vessels for other examples, like the Rokh battleship which used to be referred to as the cinderblock or the Naga battlecruiser. It's fun to see how they've mixed brutalist with radiotower aesthetics for that faction.

[kevingriffith]

This just reminds me of a bunch of digital paintings I saw a couple years ago. (A quick google search says they were done by Eric Geusz.) Basically he took a bunch of mundane household objects (bottles, electric razors, potato peelers, etc) and used them as the basis for spaceship designs. Some of them are a bit silly, but some of them are legitimately cool designs.

[seth]

Wow thanks for mentioning Moscow landmarks, the Mercury tower also resembles Orion-class destroyer from Freespace, and top-to-bottom Ostankino tower drone shot is glorious, Soviet-era high-rise construction is impressive.

[WarmocK]

I've been working on a ship design using art deco for some time now - works surprisingly well and you get these awesome dieselpunk vibes quite easily. ^^

[nicholasolson]

1. I'm always happy when someone remembers the USS Cygnus
2. That last image reminds me of the rocket at the end of Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. A literal castle tower was also a rocket. VHD is kinda wild like that.

[hackr]

I see what you mean about the curved parts of the ishimura looking like flying buttresses, but to me they always evoked the idea of an exposed ribcage, as if the ship itself was as much of a decaying, undead monster as the necromorphs that infest its halls.

[spacepiratecaptainrush]

one influence I'm surprised you didn't bring up in the general ship inspirations is Sports cars, especially since those are in my opinion one of the main influences behind the Empire's ships in Legend of the Galactic Heroes. High ranking admirals get bespoke sculpted command ships that are part work of art and part political statement. This contrasted with the Free Planets Alliance with it's much more uniform and utilitarian ship designs.

something I haven't seen yet but might be cool would be classical/neoclassical architecture to evoke some of that high Roman Empire kind of vibes. like, turn the city of Venice into a spaceship