The Danish architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group has always thought ‘BIG’, but even its owner had never conceived that one day he might be designing homes for human habitat on the Moon.
“I had not imagined when I was little that I would one day sit and talk so seriously about building houses on the moon,” the company’s founder, chief executive and head architect, Bjarke Ingels told DR about his company’s latest project.
As part of NASA’s lunar project ‘Artemis’, which aims to start sending humans to the Moon by 2024, BIG has got the contract to design the buildings of the first ever ‘permanent lunar habitat’ in collaboration with the 3D company ICON and design company SEArch +.
According to Ingels, the habitat could be ready by the end of the decade.
Challenging decade ahead
The 200 sqm habitat will be the home of four astronauts working a one-month shift – the equivalent of a lunar day in fact.
ICON is involved because the homes will be made using raw materials already on the Moon, which will be 3D-printed.
“You heat up the moon dust so that it becomes moon lava, and then you print,” explained Ingels, who foresees a decade with hundreds of challenges.
“It is bitterly cold at night, it is boiling hot during the day and zero pressure, so there are plenty of challenges,” he added.
