The geostationary station of the Slovenian Herman Potočnik Noordung is the first planned architecture designed for living in space and to be placed in the earth’s orbit.

This engineered construction, dating from 1928, consists of three independent units. The central unit is the residential wheel, which spins and thereby creates artificial gravity, the second unit is the observatory and the third is a precisely planned solar electric power station.

A pioneer of space flight, Herman Potočnik Noordung was born in 1892 in Pula and died in 1929, aged 36, in Vienna. His main scientific work was the book The Problem of Space Travel.

Screenplay writer Arthur C. Clarke and advisor for space technology Frederick Ordway III included a version of Potočnik’s geostationary station in Stanley Kubrick’s modernist film 2001: A Space Odyssey.