Interplanetary Urbanization

Interplanetary Urbanization

The evolution of urbanization and humans is pushing the boundaries of life being sheltered only on Earth, and the shift towards life on Mars is essential to be researched and considered. As architecture in space enters a new era, there has been a fundamental shift in the space industry from short term explorations onto long-term colonization, and new ventures such as space tourism. Present day architects need to learn how to develop multiple specie supporting design concepts for space exploration, as well as the need to employ an architectural intelligence and experimentation that can result in an operational architecture capable of inserting itself on space. The future urban realities require imaginative and resourceful approaches, in which architecture redefines the history of human conditions, a search in which urban active forms can enable urban shifts and transformations.

When we talk about interplanetary colonization, we need to shift out of the traditional boundaries of design and construction since this is a challenging, multi-disciplinary problem that requires expertise from a wide variety of fields: aerospace engineering, environmental engineering, social science, urban planning, design, architecture, and structural engineering. Unlike structural engineering for the built environment on Earth, there are virtually zero rules of thumb or design precedents to draw on for construction on Mars or the Moon. There is exciting potential to shape this discussion with fundamental structural engineering principles and forward-looking material and fabrication strategies. The opportunity is lying in front of us, the challenge is to learn how to open a multidisciplinary collaboration that has success as the main interest.

“Mars is the most habitable planet in our Solar System besides Earth,” said Laura Kerber, Research Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “But it remains a hostile world for many kinds of life. A system for creating small islands of habitability would allow us to transform Mars in a controlled and scalable way.” (Nature Astronomy volume 3, pages898–903(2019). This statement leads us to begin thinking and planning how the urbanization should be thought beforehand as a controlled and scalable object.

Figure 5: Sectional studies of Mars colonization proposals. Drawings by Valeria Cedillos.

Figure 6: Sectional studies of Mars colonization proposals. Drawings by Valeria Cedillos.

Apart from space technology and urban design, before we land on the mars, we need figure out a series of ways to support human living on such extreme environment including getting water, producing oxygen, acquiring energy and so on. Since the atmosphere on Mars is very thin and contains very little oxygen, we need enclosed interior space meanwhile allowing the nature light enters. In order to create a huge space, there is a need to design a huge structure system formed by interconnected domes.

Designer and Engineers not only have to analyze and deeply study the urban conditions of the extraterrestrial planet, but once they are understood they need to provide solutions for a new type of unknown civilization: human and martian species. Even though there is still not enough information to know what types of living organisms are found in the planet, we need to contemplate that there might be some, maybe only microorganism life. This forces us to create habitats in which humans wouldn’t arrive to displace martian life, but create some sort of new interaction and connection in between species.

Metabolic approaches for urbanization on space must render the built environment as unevenly produced, and constantly reshaped, by a continuous circulation of material and energy driven by socio-political and biophysical forces. Exploring the ways in which contemporary forms of urbanism hinge upon, and in turn intensify the variegated array of transformations across multi-scale operational landscapes—including landscapes of extraction, circulation and accumulation.

Urbanization approaches on space could help us learn and bring back urban qualities to earth, and instead of facing and exposing human species to unknown and extreme environment we could start redesigning in a dark ecological way, admitting our coexistence with the toxic contemporary urban environment that we have created and exploited. Even though interplanetary colonization would be a milestone for our species survival, we can’t detach from the thought that if there where to be existing life on mars, then we should no nothing with Mars, because it would then belong to the martians.