EASY-TO-CONSTRUCT, COMFORTABLE LIVING ON MARS.

'New Home' is a proposal for a Martian habitat, designed by Marek Podlaha and Antónia Pohanková. The new home uses a prefabricated spaceship that is transported from earth, as the centre of the home. The spaceship will land on the surface of Mars, while a transparent plastic-like ETFE membrane would inflate to create living spaces. The construction concept consists of several stages, which will minimize the need for large machinery, but allow for sufficient living space.

"Within this concept, we combine both prefabrication of self-deployable structure and utilization of local materials to minimize the need for earth-bound material and machinery" Antónia Pohanková explains. 

A manned mission to Mars will pose a significant architectural challenge. Due to the mission’s logistics, the crew would be required to stay on the planet for a lengthy 1.5 years. 

The designers believe that the mission will only be successful if the new home contains space where the crew can not only work but also relax and enjoy themselves — protected from the hostile environment of Mars's atmosphere. 

The new home is a central six-story structure that is prefabricated on Earth, which holds all the necessary life support systems, installations, and folded structures that will extend the habitat. Once completed, the structure is launched and takes six-month to travel to Mars. After landing, robots collect and compact the local ground to create a foundation for the building, the membrane envelope is wrapped around the central structure, and inflated with compressed Martian air. The structure even contains three balconies, which will deploy from within the central structure and unfold around it. To make the space livable, oxygen is extracted from the local gases and water is extracted from ice embedded in the ground. 

Indulge in the New Home gallery to see the concept in full.