Galina Andreevna Balaschowa

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Galina Andrejewna Balaschowa (born Brjuchowa ; Russian Галина Андреевна Балашова ; * 1931 in Kolomna ) is a Russian architect. She was responsible for the interiors of several Soviet spacecraft at RKK Energija .

Life

Galina Andrejewna was born in the Moscow region as the daughter of the forester Andrei Fyodorowitsch Brjuchow. After graduating from school, she studied at the Moscow Architecture Institute from 1949 , which she graduated in 1955.

She then worked for a year in Kuibyshev (now Samara), but returned to the Moscow area after her marriage to the physicist Yuri Pavlovich Balaschow in 1956. There she was hired in 1957 as an architect at Experimental-Konstruktionsbüro 1 (OKB-1), today RKK Energija, initially as the architect of the residential buildings for the several thousand employees of the company.

Since 1963 she has worked as an interior architect and designer for the Soviet space program - as the only architect in a team of engineers and scientists. In 1964 she was appointed chief engineer of the Soviet manned lunar program , whose lunar orbiter was built but never used. Her work included the artistic and functional room design as well as the appropriate and safe choice of materials, the interior lighting, furniture and their functionality in weightlessness, to toilets and the restraint of sleeping cosmonauts.

Among other things, she developed the interiors for Woschod , Soyuz , the basic module of the Mir and Buran space stations . The cockpit and living area of ​​the Mir were later taken over with modifications for the ISS .

"Galina Balaschowa is also the only woman in space history who has significantly shaped more than three generations of spacecraft."

- Philipp Meuser

In addition to the spaceships themselves, she also designed medals and mission badges, including the one for the Apollo Soyuz Test Project in 1975.

Due to the strict secrecy of the Soviet space program, Balashova's activities were unknown for a long time. Her designs, most of which she executed as watercolors, could only be shown to a wider public after her retirement and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Balaschowa has been retired since 1990 and lives in Korolev near Moscow.

The German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt am Main dedicated an exhibition to the designer Balaschowa in 2015. “Design for Soviet Space Travel - The Architect Galina Balaschowa” from June 27 to November 15, 2015 showed her early watercolors, technical drawings, space travel food she designed, cosmonaut suits and different spaceship models. The 83-year-old came to Frankfurt for the opening.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Katharina Sebold, Design im Weltall, in: moderneREGIONAL 16, 3
  2. ^ A b Philipp Meuser: Spatial art for life in another world. Galina Balaschowa, designer of the Soviet space shuttles Soyuz, MIR and Buran. in: Outer Space. Fascination of space. Catalog for the exhibition from October 3, 2014 to February 22, 2015; Bonn 2014, ISBN 978-3-89479-873-4 , pp. 40-43.
  3. ↑ The emblem of the Soyuz-Apollo program - space-architect.com ( Memento from May 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ).
  4. ↑ Biography on space-architect.com ( Memento from March 23, 2016 in the Internet Archive ).
  5. ^ The architect Galina Balaschowa , DAM June 26, 205.
  6. ↑ Space travel design at DAM Frankfurt - Beautiful living in space , review in Deutschlandradio Kultur on June 26, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Balaschowa, Galina Andreevna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Балашова, Галина Андреевна; Balashova, Galina Andreevna
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian architect, largely responsible for the interior design of Soviet spacecraft
DATE OF BIRTH 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Kolomna