Sometimes it feels as if we were all looking for alternative spaces to planet Earth: while some of us escape to virtual realities and the digital world, others wish to travel to other planets and SAGA Space Architects hopes to reach for the moon.
Since its founding in 2018, the young Danish architectural studio comprising architects and engineers and specialising in space architecture, won two architectural competitions on space habitats. In their practice SAGA develop projects on how to build healthier homes in space with a focus on physical and mental well-being.
In 2020 the studio founders Sebastian Aristotelis and Karl-Johan Sørensen tested their first lunar habitat - Lunark - during a mission in northern Greenland that lasted nearly a hundred days.
The duo set up the habitat and lived in it to study how well the architecture functions and how isolation in an extreme environment affects the mind. The mission was turned into a six-episode documentary produced by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation DR and Lunark is currently part of the exhibition "A Space Saga" at the Danish Architecture Center (until 4th September).
The United States' Apollo 11 was the first crewed mission to land on the Moon on 20 July 1969, but the Apollo 17's mission in 1972 (the final mission of NASA's Apollo program) marked the most recent time humans set foot on the moon.
Thanks to the latest advances in rocket technology and interest on space travel, the American space agency, NASA, is planning to send astronauts to the moon in 2025.
What kind of structure will be the ideal habitat for the lunar landscape? Fascinated by the moon, Pierre Cardin incorporated circles and spherical elements in his fashion and interior design collections, but SAGA Space Architects have a geometrical vision of the future.
"Lunark" is indeed inspired by Japanese origami: it indeed a sort of egg-shaped foldable structure based on trapezoids that can easily fit in the cargo hold of a rocket ship.
It can be folded and turned into a compact design during transport or while in storage and unfolded again after landing, increasing its volume by 750%. The astronauts eat, sleep and exercise inside this 4.5 square metre caspule until it is time for them to return to Earth.
The shape of the habitat is very intriguing and, if you like fashion, you can easily draw parallels with Issey Miyake's foldable and wearable architectures for the body.
Lunark offers the astronauts a very limited space, so some practical thinking was required while packing and Sebastian Aristotelis and Karl-Johan Sørensen had to carefully consider issues regarding food storage and the numbers of items they could carry with them.
The researchers also had to take into consideration other issues: inside the habitat there isn't much room for privacy and a high-tech space suit designed to keep the astronaut warm, even at -45 degrees Celsius, is the only option for going outside the habitat, exercise or get some alone time.
Besides, on Earth we tune our bodies and our senses in with the changing seasons or variations in weather. But changes in light, temperature, sound and smell do not happen in space where everyday life is monotone, and our senses are starved of variety.
Overcoming these difficulties meant that the architects had to study also the psychological effects of isolation to learn how we can stimulate astronauts' senses through the way we build homes for space.
To solve these issues, the studio developed light panels that simulate circadian rhythms using LED lighting and brought living organisms such as algae in space to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and as a source of proteins and essential vitamins and minerals.
The architects also launched a collaboration with French perfumer Francis Kurkdjian, who helped them create different fragrances designed to give astronauts stimuli from Earth for the sense of smell (that's a clever idea - will we ever have in future a perfume creator working with astronauts?).
The Lunark experience allowed the duo to take into account parameters when designing architectures for the Earth - air, stable temperatures, water and food - and consider how they are not available on the moon, which means that architects creating structures designed for space will have to develop a whole new way of thinking.
SAGA's lunar habitat, is the first project that ths studio fully realized and it was made possible thanks to the investment of 50 private companies and of 600 Kickstarter supporters.
Lunark won SAGA the prestigious Index Award in 2021 in the People's Choice category, and people interested in space architectures can now discover more about it at the event "A Space Saga", in the Golden Gallery at the Danish Architecture Center (DAC).
The exhibition doesn't feature many information on a possible wardrobe for a lunar trip (but at the DAC Cafe you can try the freezedried food that astronauts eat...), even though the suit the two researchers used to go to Greenland is on display.
But let's hope that in future the architects will collaborate with a proper fashion designer on a compact wardrobe of foldable items (maybe?) to bring to the moon.
The event at the DAC is not just for science fiction fans and space enthusiasts: the exhibition invites indeed visitors to consider how we can create something keeping limitations and restrictions firmly in mind, a principle that we can apply and experiment with in different disciplines, from art and architecture to fashion and interior design.
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