Celestial Architecture

Celestial Architecture is the art and science of designing spacecraft. In the New Diasporia universe this typically means shunt capable vessels as opposed to space vehicles capable of using the Major Routes or Blue highways. The design of the smaller, mass produced vessels used on these routes is typically called Aerospace Engineering.
While small spacecraft are designed based on both aesthetic and practical engineering considerations, large space vessels are almost totally designed based on practical engineering design factors. This leads to a uniformity of design practices. That is, vessels of similar purposes will almost always be designed to the same constraints, and will look and perform similarly.
So for example, men o' war are almost always spherical in shape. This is because force fields which are spherical rather than conformal are lighter, cheaper and require less power. The size and strength of the field required by a hyper utility vehicle is small enough that the difference between maintaining a spherical or conformal field does not result in a great enough limitation to constrain the design. Other considerations, such as parking convenience and ability to utilize transmat portals are more important. For heavily armored war craft though, the spherical shape is the most efficient one.
Smaller vessels, like the pinnace, schooner and corvette are typically cylindrical or saucer shaped, depending on their size.
Unlike craft propelled by reaction engines a vessel which uses a Barnes-Gutierrez Engine is not constrained to a single axis of movement. A B/G engine can thrust equally well in any direction. In all but the smallest craft the control room, or as it more properly known, the bridge, is typically centrally located in the vessel rather than at the "front." Most modern vessels will typically thrust so that the vessel's motion is perpendicular to the main deck, with "down" facing the direction of origin. Since it is not required to change the orientation of the engine to change its direction of thrust vessels do not "flip" to decelerate. On larger vessels not all decks necessarily are oriented to the same direction. Such vessel are never meant to land on a planetary surface and provide their own gravity anyway. There is no reason they should maintain a consistent "down" direction, and often it is more convenient for them not to.
 Radial designs have many benefits and most modern vessels which are not spherical use a radial design. The very smallest craft; brakes, HUVs and hypertrains are the exception.