Galina Balashova

Galina Andreevna Balashova (Russian: Галина Андреевна Балашова, born 1931) is a Russian architect and designer who was associated with the Soviet space program.

The Apollo-Soyuz logo by Galina Balashova.

Life

Balashova was born in Kolomna and was educated at the Moscow Architectural Institute. Balashova began her career in 1955 at the GiproAviaProm design institute in Kuibyshev. Her work at this time involved removing decorative elements, considered "decadent", from residential buildings. In 1957, she became senior architect at OKB-1, which was responsible for design during the early days of the Soviet space program. She began by designing residences for employees but later contributed to the interior design of the Soyuz spacecraft[1] and the Salyut and Mir space stations. Balashova also worked as a consultant for the Buran programme. She retired in 1991 upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, making her work no longer a State secret and available to the public.[2][3][4]

Work

Her work with the space program included the design of interior spaces, furniture, control panels, decorative logos and murals for interior walls.[5] Balashova designed for a zero gravity environment, using contrasting colors for floor and ceiling so that astronauts would not become disoriented. Her color schemes come from her experience doing watercolors as a child, where she began her artistic education.[2] Balashova also used the color green in her designs so the televisions at the time would produce the color truthfully.[2]

In 2018 in the United States for the first time Galina Balashova's remarkable life and professional accomplishments have been uncovered and emphasized in talks presented at international conferences organized by two leading American universities.[6][7]

Her design for lapel pins used at the Aérosalons exhibition in France in 1973 later became official emblem for the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project. Balashova was denied approval to attach her name to her own drawing under the "pretext of safety," losing the opportunity to spread her name among 100,000 distributed pins at the exhibition.[2] Press coverage increased in the Soviet Union and the United States but Balashova still failed to receive any credit for her designs. When the lapel pins began production in a factory in Mytishchi, certificates for Balashova's design were created by the factory's artistic committee without approval of the government.[2] Balashova's superiors became enraged that she held not only the copyright, but also she was officially registered as the creator; her superiors considered themselves to be the creators of the emblem, and that the workers were only following their direction.[2] Bobkov, one of her superiors, threatened to place Balashova in jail for 8 years "for the betrayal of State secrets." Balashova was only able to save herself by claiming it was not her, but the factory who submitted the certificate, and that she was forced to sign a declaration of renunciation and restrict any future royalty payments for the emblem.[2] For comparison, a male in the department found the emblem and reproduced it with a hexagonal profile and reportedly received tens of thousands of dollars for his design, which was simply a replica of Balashova's design.[2]

Galina Balashova's pioneering achievements are illuminated in major planned volumes on women's contribution to architecture[8][9], but her contributions to zero gravity designs are rarely recognized today beyond a few minor exhibitions and these volumes.

gollark: Why should I?
gollark: I don't see why you can't just run the system on Minoteaur.
gollark: i.e. a similar vaguely game-theoretic thing but more complicated.
gollark: Idea: iterated prisoner's dilemma but good (some offense)?
gollark: We really should have a KotH event of some sort though.

References
  1. "The Artists". Space Mission Patches.
  2. Meuser, Philipp, 1969-. Galina Balashova : architect of the Soviet space programme. Knowles, Clarice,. Berlin. ISBN 978-3-86922-355-1. OCLC 903080663.CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. ""Galina Balashova: Architect of the Soviet Space Programme" at DAM Frankfurt". BigMat International Architecture Agenda.
  4. "The Soviet Architect Who Drafted the Space Race". Motherboard. August 18, 2015.
  5. "Galina Balashova". Icon. October 28, 2015.
  6. Sokolina, Anna P. (March 29, 2018). "The Secret Star of the Outer Space Program: Galina Balashova, First Architect of Spaceship Interiors."". 2018 International Archive of Women in Architecture IAWA Symposium "Women Inventors in Architecture 1700-2000." Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, College of Architecture and Urban Studies, School of Architecture + Design, Blacksburg, VA. Retrieved February 24, 2019.
  7. Sokolina, Anna P. (April 7, 2018). "«Galina Balashova: First Architect of Soviet Spacecraft Interiors.»". 39 Northeast Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies NESEEES Conference, New York University, Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia, New York, NY. Retrieved February 24, 2019.
  8. "Routledge Companion to Women in Architecture". Sokolina, Anna, ed. London, New York: Routledge. Under contract.
  9. "Bloomsbury Global Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture, 1960–2015". Brown, Lori A., and Karen Burns, eds. London, New York: Bloomsbury. Under contract.
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