Mars Colonization: Explorations in Architecture and Reproduction

Interactive Environments : Winter 2010
Figure 1

OVERVIEW
The focus of this design studio is to allow architecture students to make contributions to the conceptual design for alternative means of Martian Colonization through means creating architecture that creates itself.   The Project has three Primary Considerations including: The actual trajectory issues (how to get materials to the Mars), Chemical Processing (how to make materials on the Mars) and Space Manufacturing (how to fabricate and assemble/construct things on Mars).  Of the central issues explored in this studio, we will concentrate on Manufacturing as a process carried out by small modular robotics.  The premise of the approach is that rather than sending a constructed architecture to space, we send tiny robotic modules that are capable of reproducing through automated fabrication techniques using in-situ materials. The modules with embedded sensors, self-healing composites, and responsive materials will construct buildings aimed at adaptation. Such buildings can respond in a humanlike way to counteract loads and reduce material, change shape to block sunlight, allow for active ventilation and insulation, and prevent their own degradation. When enough of architecture of the colony has constructed itself – we send humans to inhabit it. 

COLONIZATION:
The designs will primarily focus on the master plan of a colony for 10,000 inhabitants. The colony will be an assembly of numerous discrete yet interconnected projects that include residential, public, civil, industrial, commercial, research, healthcare, and farming etc.

BIOMIMETICS + GROWTH
Biomimetic case studies will be explored as a means to satisfy adaptability in terms of form, processes, and systems.  Central to biomimicry within the context of this studio is an understanding of the process by which organisms grow and develop. This area of developmental biology includes growth, differentiation, and morphogenesis. In terms of adaptation, the area of morphogenesis will be primarily studied as a means to create an architecture that ensures a continuous turnover of cellular-like robotic modules that dynamically ensure mechanical integrity similar to that of a living, evolving system.

DESIGN PROJECT:
Students will explore and demonstrate hyper - efficient urban planning and architectural design which includes human and environmental interactions, sociology and psychology.   Students will work individually or in teams of two to produce complete designs including the detailed development and a construction/ fabrication concept.  Students will develop scaled prototypes of their systems that can successfully demonstrate the robotic aspects of the project as integrated into the designs to optimize the performative aspects in terms of energy, mobility and robustness. Physical models will demonstrate actual robotics, structure and materials. Issues of embedded computational control structures, communication and kinetic engineering are therefore paramount.  The environment on the moon will be seriously considered including:  gravity, pressure, radiation, and the mass balance of resources and waste required for sustaining human life at such a scale.