Life on Mars

MoMA

LI FE

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MA RS Mid-twentieth century precedents for Martian Dwelling curated by Rebecca Velic

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map of exhibits

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list of exhibits

4 essay

12 citations

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ENTRANCE

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MAP OF EXHIBITIONS - MOMA, 6TH FLOOR

CONTENTS

This exhibition seeks to draw a connection between the development of collapsible, mass-produced housing in the mid-twentieth century and modern research and conceptual designs for human dwelling units on Mars. There are many significant considerations that must be made before attempting to design for life on another planet. Coincidentally, the twentieth-century precedents on display for this exhibit also make use of these considerations, with the hope of designing Earth-based dwellings that are efficient, sleek and modern. These considerations are outlined as compactibility, materialy, and integration of mechanical systems. The exhibits chosen as precedents for Martian dwellings are the Dymaxion House (Buckminster Fuller), the House of the Future and Appliance Houses (Alison and Peter Smithson), Living Pod (David Greene/ARCHIGRAM), and the Environment Bubble (Reyner Banham). The trend in the 1950s and 1960s of developing homes in this manner parallels advancements in materials and home appliances, particularly the air conditioner, as well as the contemporaneous Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union. Coincidentally, the development of homes like this (for non-astronauts) dropped off after the United States reached the Moon. With the development of the International Space Station and advancements in rocket ship technologies, along with an upswing in movies about space travel (Interstellar, The Martian, Gravity, just to name a few), compact, futuristic homes are making a comeback, allowing NASA to regain its former popularity. NASA, along with SPACEx, have made significant advancements in the journey to Mars. The Pathfinder and Curiosity rovers, along with their heavy publicity, have allowed humans to see the conditions of Mars, while simultaneously gathering important data about the planet’s environment. Elon Musk is predicting that humans will settle Mars within the next few decades and has devised several ways to get hundreds of people there. The difficulty lies in developing an architecture, a temporary one for the time being, that can withstand the harsh environment of the planet, while simultaneously providing earthlike comforts to its inhabitants. Three proposals for dwellings will be exhibited: the Ice House and the Ice Home SEArch and Clouds AO) and Mars Habitation (Foster + Partners). These dwellings will be examined with the same lens as their historical precedents: compactibility, materiality, and mechanical systems integration. In a sense, this is the second Space Race: transporting humanity the furthest it’s ever been.

EXIT

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Alison + Peter Smithson House of the Future Models Drawings, Advertisements

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Reyner Banham The Environment Bubble

EXHIBITION DETAILS

Mars Habitation Foster + Partners 1:1 Model

7 Buckminster Fuller Dymaxion House Drawings Advertisements

2 ARCHIGRAM Group Amazing Archigram 4 Select Pages on display David Greene’s Living Pod

3 Mars Ice House SEArch + Clouds AO Video Presentation 1:1 Model

8 Mars Ice Home SEArch + Clouds AO 1:1 Model

Alison + Peter Smithson Snowball House Architectural Drawings Models, Sketches

life on mars mid-twentieth century precedents for martian dwelling

There are many characteristics that make up the ideal home on Earth. While some of these characteristics are frivolous, there are many more that are particularly essential, such as adjacency of spaces, materiality, location, and integration of mechanical services for human comfort. It is quite simple to design a home on Earth where the boundary conditions and constraints are known: the atmosphere is mostly nitrogen with some oxygen and other elements, some areas are warmer or colder than others, and it is known what the land can provide us with in terms of materials. There is a wealth of information available and if hypotheses need to be tested, the laboratory is just a few steps away in the great outdoors. The boundary conditions and constraints change greatly for designing on a different planet; however, the characteristics listed above remain the same. The Martian home should 1 Banham, ‘Home is not a House,’ 75.

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be able to provide a human with the same comforts that he or she had back on Earth. The colonization of Mars will eventually become reality and the next phases of the planning process involve determining precisely how humans are going to be able to live in the harsh conditions of the Red Planet. Five proposals for dwellings on Mars will be examined in this exhibition, but first, there will be the consideration of historical precedents for these dwellings. The increase in popularity of science fiction as well as the momentum of the space race, helped inspire futuristic and functional architecture during the mid-twentieth century. Five examples of these dwellings will be examined with Martian proposals in order to conclude how mobility, materiality, and integration of systems of the Earth dwellings correspond directly to the modern Martian proposals.

An ideal starting point for a historical precedent for the exhibition is Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion House. Its initial design in 1930 reflects both the increase in popularity of the science fiction genre, as well as the need in post-depression America for more inexpensive and portable homes. Unfortunately, the Dymaxion house was unable to achieve very much initial success and exposure, despite its integrated and efficient design.

Dymaxion is a portmanteau of dynamic, maximum, and tension, reflecting the core concept of the design.

The home is meant to be dynamic and adaptable, with the ability to arrange its interior organization and its physical location at will. It was intended to allow for maximum livability, which can be manipulated by its movable interior walls. Its walls were to be made out its movable interior walls. Its walls were to be made

out of lightweight, naturally derived casein. The home was also to be a tensile structure, entirely suspended from a centralized structural core, which would also act as the main mechanical shaft of the home. The centralization and integration of mechanical and living systems reflects the ideas put forth by Reyner Banham in his essay, “A Home is not a House,” and are refered to as a ‘standard-of-living package’. 1 The Dymaxion house was intended to be entirely customizable, with the elements of each home selected from a kit of parts.

Writes Michael John Gorman in Buckminster Fuller: Designing for Mobility: “The bathrooms would cast in a single sculptural unit of Casein, the doors would be made from silver balloon silk, and would be inflatable, thus dustproof, the sheltercovers would be made from Duralumin, the floors would 5

be ‘inflatable ruberoid units.’”2

The material qualities of these bathroom elements brings to mind images of the International Space Station, as well as the shuttles and living pods seen in films such as Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, 2011) and The Martian (Ridley Scott, 2015). Materials brought into space and onto another planet are meant to be lightweight, due to the limited amount of mass a rocket can physically thrust beyond the atmosphere. The scientists at NASA and JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratories) must opt for inflatable or collapsible forms for their lightweight properties and easy transport.

Perhaps without even realizing it, Buckminster Fuller would soon become an inspiration for the development of collapsible, futuristic dwellings for astronomical bodies. Gorman quotes, ‘[Fuller] describe[d] the Dymaxion House as ‘designed to withstand all forces which seek to penetrate or destroy human life process.’”3 This line is the essence of developing any vessel for carrying human life into space. Not only must the vessel be designed to be lightweight and easily portable, but it must be able to survive the unforgiving nature of space and protect its inhabitants, while simultaneously keeping them comfortable. Drawings and advertisements of the Dymaxion House (like the one on the left) will be exhibited.

The Dymaxion House was met with mixed reactions from the general population, as was the House of the Future, designed by Alison and Peter Smithson in 1955 through 1956. They produced the house for The Daily Mail’s Ideal Home Exhibition of 1956. Like the Dymaxion house in the US a few decades earlier, the House of the Future was a stark contrast to the brick and mortar townhouses familiar to Londoners at

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2 Gorman, Designing for Mobility, 42.

3 ibid., 45.

the time. The House of the Future is organized around a central courtyard, with rooms flowing organically from one to another. The walls of the home are hollow and double shelled,4 moulded from a plastic impregnated fibrous plaster.5 The cavities between the walls are deep enough to allow for space to accommodate appliances and other amenities necessary for human comfort. The use of plastic gives way to the development of more fantastical forms, curved edges and corners, while also being lightweight.6 Like the Dymaxion House, drawings and advertisements of the House of the Future will be exhibited, as well as scale models in order to examine how the appliances become integrated into the plastic walls.

The introduction of new materials into home design made the House of the Future stand out amongst other homes within this time, while simultaneously reflecting the home’s position within the context of the Space Race.

Plastic is used frequently for space applications because it is lightweight, moldable and flexible. While the House of the Future is not as portable as the Dymaxion House, its cavity walls for integrating appliances and mechanical systems and plastic were important innovations that were absorbed into the designs of living areas on space shuttles and the International Space Station.

The Appliance Houses, also by Alison and Peter Smithson take the successes of the House of the Future and reimagines them in new forms. The form that this exhibit will focus on is the Snowball house, largely because of its round plan, similar to the Dymaxion house, as well as its organization around a central courtyard, like 4 Zeinstra, “Houses of the Future,” 205.

5 Vidotto, Alison and Peter Smithson: Works and Projects, 60.

6 Zeinstra, “Houses of the Future,” 211.

the House of the Future. Since it was never completed in model, it will be presented as a series of drawings and sketches.

Much like the House of the Future, the appliances and systems within the Snowball House are also hidden within the walls. This segregates them from the interior, thus streamlining it. This also allows for easy replacement of appliances, as they are highly dependent on trends and are more subject to obsolescence.7 The house was a response to the adjustment of modern life to being governed by machines and appliances, an idea that Le Corbusier embraced and recommended others also embrace.8 Appliance cubicles in the home contained connections for food preparation, sanitation, communication, storage and maintenance. The shells of the cubicles functioned as main structural units and often influenced the form of the home.9 Instead of being centralized as they were in the Dymaxion house, the mechanical systems are distributed, allowing more freedom for the development of the form, where the central point of the home is centered on the courtyard, rather than the mechanical system.

The Living Pod, designed by David Green of ARCHIGRAM is disparate from its mechanical system.

Two systems coexist: the living system and the mechanical system, both of which rely on the operation of the other. Greene developed the project for Amazing Archigram 4, the fourth issue of ARCHIGRAM, which was published in a similar style to the Action Comics popular during the 1960s. The essays were presented in comic format, with characters, speech bubbles, collages and graphics depicting their projects and inspirations.

It is beneficial for this issue of ARCHIGRAM and significant pages10 to be put on display for the purposes of this exhibition. It provides a contemporaneous, pop -culture driven connection between mechanical, massproduced housing and the Space Race.

Greene used the mobile trailer home as a precedent for the Living Pod, as well as the Capsule and Plug-In City contemporaneously developed by ARCHIGRAM 7 Zeinstra, “Houses of the Future,” 213.

8 From Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, 123-127: “Every modern man has the mechanical sense. The feeling for mechanics exists and is justified by our daily activities. This feeling in regard to machinery is one of respect, gratitude and esteem. Machinery includes economy as an essential factor leading to minute selection. There is a moral sentiment in the feeling for mechanics.”

9 Vidotto, Alison and Peter Smithson: Works and Projects, 70.

10 Specific pages to be displayed are not yet known as obtaining a copy of Amazing Archigram 4 is rather challenging and expensive.

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collaborators Warren Chalk and Peter Cook, respectively.

Despite its ability to be plugged into the Plug-In City, Greene looked at his Living Pod as a transient object, able to be deflated, picked up and moved to its next home, much like the trailer home (or the space capsule).

He felt ‘the house is an appliance for carrying with you, the city is a machine for plugging into,’11 making reference to another ARCHIGRAM project, the Walking City by Ron Herron. The importance of its flexibility, mobility and plasticity, as well as its integration of mechanical systems make it an important precedent for the development of Martian dwellings. Along with pages from Amazing Archigram 4, models (like the one pictured above), will be put on display.

Also in the 1960s, Reyner Banham argued quite extensively for the integration of mechanical and environmental systems into architecture. His first book, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age praises the inclusion and centralization of mechanics into the Dymaxion House: ‘In the Fuller version, this equipment is seen as more alike, in being mechanical than different because of time-honored functional differentiations, and is therefore packed together in the central core of the house, whence it distributes services--cleanliness, nourishment, ventilation, to the surrounding living space.’12

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11 Greene, ARCHIGRAM, 52.

12 Banham, 327.

He uses this concept in the formulation of his own discourse on mechanically driven homes, particularly in his essay, “Home is Not a House.” He argues for homes that are physically supported by their mechanical systems, like The Environment Bubble (p. 78 of the essay and also on display in this exhibtion). It is a plastic dome inflated by the home’s air conditioning unit, attached to what Banham referred to as a ‘standard-ofliving’ package, which contained all of the mechanical elements required to keep an occupant comfortable.

Like the Dymaxion House and the Living Pod, the Environment Bubble is also collapsible and despite it being merely a concept, it was to be made from transparent plastic, the quintessential material of the 1950s and 1960s, exploited by all the projects listed above, as well as in space applications.

DESIGNING FOR MARS Mars: the atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide, the gravity is only about one-third of Earth’s, and the average temperature is around -81 degrees Fahrenheit.

A stark contrast to our little blue marble. Hence, architects designing for Mars must develop architecture that maintains an Earth microcosm inside, protecting its inhabitants. Interior pressure and atmospheric conditions are maintained using airlocks, which are sealed vestibules that equalize pressure between the interior and exteior. In this area, inhabitants can disrobe from their space suits, while becoming readjusted to

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familiar, Earth-like conditions. The mechanical system is integral to the creation of these spaces and must be further integrated throughout the dwelling to maintain standard conditions. Systems and appliances should also be integrated and placed efficiently to allow for the maximum amount of living space. Likewise, materials must be able to both be insulative, resistant to UV degradation and penetration,13 while also being easy to transport from Earth to Mars. Many proposals have considered bringing materials to Mars, while others have developed materials using Martian resources, such as regolith, ice and water.

Ice House by SEArch and Clouds AO is one such proposal that utilizes Martian resources in its construction. The architects utilized NASA’s ‘Follow the Water Approach’14 in order to pick a site to develop their projects. They chose a site that has a large amount of water beneath the surface and hope to use the resource to 3D print the outer and inner shells of the dwellings. They intend to send robots to Mars before the inhabitants so they can assemble the dwellings from a space capsule that is deployed to Mars containing all of the necessary materials for construction. The capsule acts as the living pod, while two layers of ETFE membrane and ice shell surround it, creating a buffer zone or ‘front yard’ between the two layers where excess oxygen from the hydroponic garden can be ventilated.15 The capsule approach directly recalls the ideas put forth by ARCHIGRAM in the 1960s, which were inspired by the developments already underway by NASA for the lunar module. The use of contemporaneous technologies for material development (3D printing and ETFE membranes) also parallels the use of plastics by all of the previously listed historical precedents. The centralization of the Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS) into the central core of the dwelling reflects similar design principles in the Dymaxion House and the Environment Bubble.

A second project also developed by SEArch and Clouds AO is the Ice Home, which underwent a feasibility study at NASA’s Langley Research Center 13 The atmosphere of Mars does not contain oxygen-based ultraviolet filters like Earth’s does, so inhabitants would need constant protection from these harmful rays.

14 The Follow the Water Approach merely utilizes the same principles that early civilizations had used in picking a site to settle at: the availability of water.

15 Mars Ice House, “Mars Ice House,” Vimeo video.

in Hampton, Virginia. This concept builds upon the ideas that both teams had previously developed with Ice House, maintaining a layer of ice within the enclosure. From NASA:

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‘The “Mars Ice Home” is a large inflatable torus...that is surrounded by a shell of water ice. The Mars Ice Home design has several advantages that make it an appealing concept. It is lightweight and can be transported and deployed with simple robotics, then filled with water before the crew arrives. It incorporates materials extracted from Mars, and because water in the Ice Home could potentially be converted to rocket fuel for the Mars Ascent Vehicle, the structure itself doubles as a storage tank that can be refilled for the next crew.’16

In plan, the Ice Home is starkly similar to the Dymaxion House. It is supported by a main mechanical and lifesupport system that allows the outer membrane to inflate.

The living spaces and rooms radiate from this central support core, just as they do in the Dymaxion House. It too is deployable, like the Living Pod. In terms of deployability, a project that is similar to the Ice Home is Mars Habitation by Foster + Partners.

The dwellings are to be sent to Mars prior to their inhabitants so that a series of semi-autonomous robots can begin construction of the settlement. The robots dig a large crater and place the self-deploying dwelling units within the crater. The robots then use the regolith they had previously dug up to 3D print the enclosure of the dwellings.17 It is now known that regolith is not an optimal material to use for living in due to its high perchlorate content,18 however, there are steps being taken by a group of researchers to develop a kind of Martian concrete from regolith.19 Foster + Partners have previously been engaged by the European Space Agency to explore the possibilities of developing 3D printed structures for lunar habitation20 and have taken a similar approach to develop Martian habitations. 3D printing the outer regolith shell locks to habitation to one location, however its inner deployable structure likens back to the Living Pod, the Environment Bubble, and the Dymaxion House. Similarly, its use of modern material innovations parallels the use of plastics back in the 1950s and 1960s.

There is still plenty of research and development to be conducted for the creation of a Martian habitat. The three proposals presented exhibit a degree of feasibility and

16 Gillard, “A New Home on Mars.”

17 Foster + Partners, “Mars Habitation.”

18 Davila, et al. “Perchlorate on Mars” 19 Wan, et al. “A Novel Material for In Situ Construction on Mars.”

20 Foster + Partners, “Lunar Habitation.”

serve as potential precedents for the habitats that will someday be put on Mars. They make the most of the local materials, minimizing the amount of cargo that would need to be blasted off to Mars. Likewise, they use materials that can be easily compressed, along with structures that can be disassembled and folded away, all without the presence of a human. In many ways, these concepts are quite similar to the ideas of the architects of the compact, mass-produced homes of the mid-twentieth century. The want for homes that

are futuristic, modern, sleek, and functional during the 1950s and 1960s parallels the modern-day need for homes with similar characteristics, though thousands of miles away on Mars, which also incorporate aspects of deployability and transience, careful material consideration and integration of mechanical systems in order to create a dwelling that provides comfort and safety for its inhabitants.

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Works Cited

Images Citations

Banham, Reyner. “Conclusion: Functionalism and

Technology,” in Theory and Design in the First Machine

Age. (New York: Praeger Publishers, Inc., 1960). 320-330.

————. “A Home is not a House.” Art in America 2.

(1965): 70-80.

Cook, Peter (ed.), ARCHIGRAM. New York: Princeton Architectural

Press, 1999.

Davila, Alfonso F.; Willson, David; Coates, John D.; McKay,

Christopher P. “Perchlorate on Mars: A chemical

hazard and a resource for humans.” in International

Journal of Astrobiology 12 (4) (2013). Accessed:

April 21, 2017, doi: 10.1017/S1473550413000189 Foster + Partners.

“Lunar Habitation.” http://www .fosterandpartners.com/projects/lunar-habitation/ ————. “Mars Habitation.” http://www.fosterandpartners.com/ projects/mars-habitation/ Gillard, Eric. “A New Home on Mars: NASA Langley’s

Icy Concept for Living on the Red Planet.” Last

modified December 29, 2016. https://www.nasa.gov/ f e a t u r e / l a n g l e y / a - n e w h o m e - o n m a r s - n a s a - l a n g l e y - s - i c y concept-for-living-onthe-red-planet Gorman, Michael John.

“Dymaxion House,” in

Buckminster Fuller: Designing for Mobility. (Italy:

Skira Editore S.p.A., 2005). 41-47.

Le Corbusier. “Mass-Production Housing,” in Towards

a New Architecture. (New York: Brewer, Warren

& Putnam, Inc, 1927). 228-265 Mars Ice House. “Mars Ice House.” Vimeo video, 3:50.

Posted [October 2015]. https://vimeo.com/142099027 Vidotto, Michael. Alison and Peter Smithson: Works and

Projects. Barcelona, Editorial Gustavo Gili: 1997.

Wan, Lin; Wendner, Roman; Cusatis, Gianluca. “A Novel

Material for In Situ Construction on Mars:

Experiments and Numerical Simulations.” in

Construction and Building Materials (2015).

Accessed: April 21, 2018. arXiv:1512.05461v1 Zeinstra, Jurjen. “Houses of the Future.” OASE Journal

for Architecture 75 (2008): 203-225. Accessed:

March 30, 2017. http://www.oasejournal.nl/en Issues/75/HousesOfTheFuture#206’

Cover: Kornmesser, M./ESO. “Artist’s Impression of Mars 4 Billion

Years Ago. March 5, 2015. ESO. Accessed: April 15, 2017. http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1509a/ Lunar Lander Schematic. Digital Image. Accessed: April 17, 2017. http://m1.paperblog.com/i/65/653563/diagramas-del proyecto-apolo-L-CpQKC0.jpeg Bucky Fuller and the Dymaxion House. Digital Image. Accessed: March 31, 2017.http://images.adsttc.com/media i m a g e s / 5 1 d e /e 1 0 e /e 8 e 4 / 4 e 6 8 / 7 3 0 0 / 0 0 0 5 newsletter/13759-004-26924FE7_(1).jpg?1417704295 House of the Future. Digital Image. Accessed: April 17, 2017. http://40. media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmbna8429f1qzglyyo1_1280. jpg Snowball House. Digital Image. Accessed: April 17, 2017. http:// www.afewthoughts.co.uk/flexiblehousing/admin/ images/165/1.jpg Amazing Archigram 4. Digital Image. Accessed April 17, 2017. http:/ w w w. f l o o r n a t u r e . i t / m e d i a / p h o t o s / 3 8 / 1 1 0 2 1 arkitekturstriper_oslo_amazing%20archigram%204.jpg Environment Bubble. Digital Image. Accessed: April 21, 2017. http:/ www.aver yreview.com/content/3-issues/16-16/5 environmental-division-of-labor/martin-04.jpg Ice House. Digital Image. Accessed April 17, 2017. http://www m a r s i c e h o u s e . c o m / h a b i t a t bd2dg1rmtu736qy2wc9jbjp9ozr40e Ice Home. Digital Image. Accessed April 17, 2017. http://www cloudsao.com/MARS-ICE-HOME Mars Habitation. Digital Image. Accessed April 17, 2017. http://www. osterandpartners.com/projects/mars-habitation/ Mars panorama. Digital Image. Accessed April 17, 2017. NASA/JPL

James Canvin.

Dymaxion House. Digital Image. Accessed April 17, 2017. http:// i m a g e s . a d s t t c . c o m / m e d i a / i m a g e s / 5 1 f 0 / 5 0 1 e / e 8 e 4 / 4 e 9 4 / e500/013b/slideshow/%C2%A9_The_Estate_of_R._ Buckminster_Fuller__via_myipamm.net.jpg?1374703641 This is A House? Digital Image. Accessed April 17, 2017. http://media treehugger.com/assets/images/2016/12/xlg_future_ house_0.jpg.650x0_q70_crop-smart.jpg Living Pod. Digital Image. Accessed April 19, 2017. http://68.media .tumblr.com/tumblr_l0xms8AOrX1qaqm2ao1_1280.jpg

‘If we eliminate from our hearts and minds all dead concepts in regard to the houses and look at the question from a critical and objective point of view, we shall arrive at the “House-Machine,” the massproduction house, healthy (and morally so too) and beautiful in the same ay that the working tools and instruments which accompany existence are beautiful.’

- Le Corbusier Towards A New Architecture, 1927

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written and designed by

Rebecca Velic

for Critical Design Approaches Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute School of Architecture Spring 2017 Final Assignment