Speaker
Description
Architecture shapes human environments in response to users’ needs and site-specific conditions. On Earth, the design process considers location, climate, terrain, access to water, energy, materials and infrastructure, and available technologies. Basic human needs remain similar, while the conditions for meeting them change radically on the Moon and Mars due to differences in gravity, atmosphere, pressure, temperature, radiation, magnetic environment, solar exposure and resource availability.
This paper takes the terrestrial architectural design process as a reference point for exploring the design of extraterrestrial habitats. Selected elements, from site assessment and the building’s relationship with its surroundings, through material, structural and spatial solutions, to energy supply and indoor environmental conditions, are examined in relation to lunar and Martian conditions.
The discussion also considers architecture’s capacity to respond to change, either passively through site, form, orientation, materials and spatial organisation, or actively through environmental monitoring and building control systems. Limited resources and infrastructure also increase the importance of autonomy, modularity, repairability and reuse.
The paper explores how far terrestrial design logic can be applied to lunar and Martian habitats and which elements require reprioritisation or redefinition. It asks whether these environments introduce new design problems or instead stimulate the search for new responses to questions already present in terrestrial architecture. Reversing the perspective, it also considers whether solutions developed in response to extraterrestrial constraints can inspire more adaptive, autonomous and resource-efficient architecture on Earth.