Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life by Design

by Larry Bell

The girding premise of this book views life—everyone’s—as our most important design activity. Intervening events, opportunities, challenges, and setbacks make life design a constant work-in-progress to fully become the person we wish to be. Our only limitations are determined by the walls of the boxes we, the architects, create. Professor Larry Bell is founder and director emeritus of the University of Houston Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture, a space entrepreneur, and author of 11 other books and more than 1,000 Forbes and Newsmax articles.

236 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 8, 2022

About the author

Larry Bell is a professor of architecture and endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston, where he founded and directs the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA). SICSA is globally recognized as a leading academic organization for research, planning, and design of habitats in extreme environments. These include orbital and planetary space facilities, polar research stations, offshore and underwater accommodations, and shelters for populations impacted by natural and man-made disasters. SISCA sponsors the world's only graduate program in space architecture. A central priority is to explore and apply sustainable design and living approaches that can prevent unnecessary extreme conditions from occurring everywhere on our planet. In this regard, Larry believes that a "Spaceship Earth" perspective is entirely realistic. Municipalities, states, and nations are beginning to realize that we are all in that tiny fragile spacecraft together. All of us depend upon the same limited support systems and share a vital mission that will determine the future of all life.

Larry and SICSA are frequently featured in national and international broadcast media and print presentations. Examples include the History Channel (Modern Marvels Series), the Discovery Channel-Canada (Daily Planet Series), NASA Select, PBS, ABC TV: Australia, the BBC TV World Business Report, the National TV Network of Italy, the Swedish Educational Network, the NECT TV Broadcast Network-Japan, Radio Moscow, and National Geographic TV-UK. Larry has been interviewed and quoted in lead Time magazine and Christian Science Monitor features. He has also written dozens of technical conference papers and professional journal articles addressing a broad range of space and terrestrial design issues, as well as written about the environment, energy, and technology for Energy Tribune, and international magazine.

Larry has cofounded several high-tech companies. One, a commercial aerospace corporation, grew to more than eight thousand professionals through various mergers and acquisitions, and was purchased by General Dynamics. A spin-off of another company he cofounded designs and manufactures drive systems for hybrid-electric buses and other vehicles that are on the roads in several cities.

In addition to NASA headquarters achievements certificates awarded to SICSA, Larry has received important international honors. Among those are the Space Pioneer Award from the Kyushu Sanyu University in Japan, and two of the highest honors awarded by the Federation of Astronautics and Cosmonautics of the Former Soviet Union - the Yuri Gagarin Diploma and the Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Gold Medal - for his contributions to international space development. His name was placed on the Russian Rocket that launched the first crew to the International Space Station. Three major professional aerospace engineering societies in the NASA Johnson Space Center Texas region jointly selected him for the Technical Educator of the Year Award in 2003.