My project views Mars as a blank canvas where reliable experiments can be made about the results of architecture on both productivity and happiness of its occupants, or, both engineering and human factors. More broadly, we will test the effects of Mars on the human psychology and the effect of humans on the Mars biology. I’m interested in the balance of passive systems with active ones for redundancy, and innovation in high-tech equipment and digital tools with low-tech executions that guarantee safety and success. I’m also intrigued by the similarities of the ISS Life Support diagram and LEED Sustainability checklist - my design attempts to test unconventional sustainability methods and bring successful ones back to Earth.
A series of aggregations with slight variances will be tested in each of the four settlement phases: the first is composed of an entirely closed system whose primary concern is survival of the crew; the second looks at the interior distribution of rooms for the pioneer group and their activities relative to one another; the third experiments with connections made between these modules for an entire community; and the fourth deals with an entire village that examines what happens when communities are separated by distances and the outdoors. The idea is that as the settlement grows, spaces are re-purposed for the construction of the next phase, and that, by the end of the last stage, the loop closes in on itself, with no trace left behind.
My design does not only look for the overlap between human needs, even comfort, and sustainable practices, the project concept is itself an experiment, a test, of finding optimal living conditions on Mars. Incremental steps are taken to ensure a steady and “correct” environment and growth. The project’s collected data is to not only provide more knowledge about planet Mars, it is to serve as a precedent to all future missions for their settlement design. (And an example for better practices here on Earth!)
The concept was most influenced by Stan Allen’s From Object to Field and inspired by Georges Perec’s Species of Spaces and Other Pieces. The former brought to life the idea of testing a series of similar elements while emphasizing connections between these elements; the latter intrigued with the idea that besides organizing spaces as a quadrant with a “private” to “public” axis and a “group” to “individual” axis (used by NASA), they can be organized based on “time of day” and their “duration”, and levels of “activity” and amount of specialized "equipment."
My project best fits the exploration category, while the result of finding optimal living conditions set as the goal of the mission will benefit the settlement category in the future. The design tackles Martian challenges of balance: environmental constraints with human needs (survivability versus comfortability), what the mission is bringing from Earth and what it will extract from Mars, what parts of the martian environment are controlled and what are left as wildcards, and the roles of digital versus physical tools.