How would you go about it? How would you equip it to handle human life demands in deep space? What kind of renewable energy source would you use? How about fuel? What kind of metals or alloys could protect life in the cold of deep space? What about gravity? Oxygen? Propulsion system? Navigation? Etc...

Any thoughts?

Project Daedalus was a British proposal for an unmanned starship designed to make a one-way journey to Barnard's Star. The Wikipedia page is quite detailed in its description of materials selection, and propulsion and communication methods. As for sending humans, it is in my opinion not worth it unless for reasons we cannot presently fathom the laws of physics will admit us getting to another star at greater than light speed and avoiding relativistic time dilation so that journeys can be made well within a human lifetime. The idea of a multi-generational starship is to me unconscionable, because it is not fair for a child to be born into that sort of environment, and the crew members should only be there by choice.

A metal or material of reflective qualities to avoid absorbing excess heat.

The metal should be exceedingly durable and have self sealing abilities(micronanites incorporated).

An energy forcefield to protect against impact from space objects & material.

Hyperlight speed to reach the destination at a reasonable time.

Antigravity secondary propusion for interplanetary and atmospheric travel. Same system could allow for gravity inside.

Dehydrated food or food pills. Perhaps something equivalent to Star Treks food dispencer.

Ship should be minimum size for manuverability, reduced risk of life.

Oxygen would be recycled.

Power source could be an yet undiscovered source, or a fusion generator, antimatter or?

Communication...? Unless we can find a way to send transmissions that could reach destinations far ahead of us or we can use telepathy...I do not know.

To add to the already great ideas:

I think an inner shell would be needed also; As "old school" as it is, I would suggest Fiberglass or maybe Carbon Fibre for its material. My reasoning is that Fibreglass has an ability to remain intact when overstressed, it also forms a complete vapor barrier which would keep any moisture from making its way into the cabin and it can also be molded as a compoundly curved structure. I do think however that for the molding process a high-tech resin would have to be developed. The advantages of wet-layed Carbon Fibre over Fibreglass are relatively small; to gain the full advantages from CF it needs to be molded in an Autoclave -- which only top end operations use and I dont have an autoclave in my shed

Regarding the Outer Shell; Metals do exist that are extremely strong and impervious to most sorts of damage but they are too heavy to be used in everyday applications -- Cars, Ships etc. A new alloy would have to be developed that weighs very little but has high tensile strength...But then again, does it have to be metal?

Life Support; Ever studied how a Large Bomb Shelter works? It works in basically the same way as a normal household but the systems have been adapted to suit the underground application. A whole new system wouldnt necessarily have to be developed solely for this application, a slightly modified design of a septic tank would be easily applicable. Also, a toilet ran from a seperate water tank with a hand pump would be very easy to sort out. Check out this design for a Category 25 underground Bomb-Shelter:

The trouble in interstellar space is excessive cold. The only heat input is the cosmic microwave background and the radiation of the stars as our sun will appear to be little more than another star once you get out of the solar system.