Five things you need to do to build a home on Mars

Header image: Ella and Nicki at the Mars Desert Research Station. Provided by the author.

Lucy Berthoud, University of Bristol

If you had to live the rest of your life on Mars, what would you miss the most? Figuring out how we could we be comfortable living on the red planet is a challenge but with increasing discussion about how to send people to Mars with the ultimate aim of colonising the planet, how to replace the sensation of the sunshine on your face or the grass beneath your feet is prescient one.

Luckily there is no shortage of expertise. On May 16, 2018, I organised a workshop at the University of Bristol in collaboration with local artists Ella Good and Nicki Kent to come up with a plan for building a Martian house here on Earth. The project is part of a large-scale public artwork, with a plan to designing the house before building it in 2019. We have already identified five key things to do, taking inspiration from research facilities such as Biosphere 2 and the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, US.

To build a house for Mars, we are working with the architecture firm Hugh Broughton Architects, designers of the Halley VI British Antarctic Research Station. They say that the need for privacy and personal space in such a small living space is critical. This is an issue already experienced by those living in other small habitats. To best address this, a house on mars would have to have small private spaces within a small house and the houses could be grouped in clusters.

In addition to a design that builds in personal space, having a purpose, task or gainful employment will be a key issue when it comes to the psychology of inhabitants. We know this from those who have migrated to any new home in another place