David Nixon is an architect specializing in the space field. He was among the first handful of architects to work on the US space programme from the mid-1980s onwards. He is the first British architect to devote most of his career to designing for space. During the 1970s in London, he worked at several leading architecture practices, including the office of Sir Hugh Casson and the early offices of Lord Norman Foster, Lord Richard Rogers and Sir Nicholas Grimshaw. In 1978 he founded the avant-garde studio of Future Systems with Czech architect Jan Kaplicky with whom he collaborated for a decade on exploratory and visionary projects. 

 

 In 1980 he moved to California and taught architecture at Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and the Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning at UCLA. At SCI-Arc he directed a graduate project funded by NASA on full-size designs for crew quarters for the early Space Station. This led to his growing focus on space as an independent consultant from the early 1990s. Past clients include NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, British Aerospace, Alenia Spazio, McDonnell Douglas, Spacehab, Kistler Aerospace Corporation and Rotary Rocket Company. In 2000 he co-founded a start-up venture to develop a compact carrier system to fly miniature experiments on the Space Shuttle, but the 2003 Columbia disaster ended all private flight access. The start-up relocated to Ireland and with ESA support switched its focus to miniature spaceflight experiment kits to boost school interest in STEM subjects. The first was flight tested on the European/Russian Foton-3 space mission and the Novespace Airbus A310 zero-g aircraft in 2007. 

  

David Nixon holds a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Liverpool and a Diploma in Architecture from the Central London Polytechnic. He has written many technical papers on space and the book 'International Space Station – Architecture Beyond Earth' published in 2016, the first fully researched account of the station's history. He is a Senior Member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society.