Earlier in 2023, RH Carter Architects received an Honourable Mention for their submission to the Mars Homes Competition put on by Charette. “This competition exists in an alternate reality,” the competition description reads. “The year is 2091. Life on Mars is no longer science fiction but an inevitable reality.”

The competition team, comprised of Bryce Jarman, Sally Huang, Stephen Travers, Liam Ryan, and Mark Flores worked together to develop a scheme that they called Martius Domus.

Martius Domus’s design consists of a bubble-like exterior membrane that surrounds the entire building and site, made from Ethylene Tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE), a highly durable and radiation-resistant fluoropolymer.

The design brief goes on to explain:

“Martius Domus is an exploration of a human habitat on Mars. It represents an epistemological shift in the way a home is constructed and inhabited. The shelter is liquid, flexible, adaptable and resist conformity. The massing of the shelter is fundamentally based on the needs and functions of the interior zones itself.

The habitat is ever-changing and never static. The threshold between the protective interior of the home and the harsh exterior of Mars, envelopes and expands to encompass the necessary programming for survival on a new planet.”

Regarding the concept’s theoretical application, the team noted that, “all materials used in the construction of the shelter are indigenous to the Martian soil and employ advanced building construction technologies.”

View the Martius Domus submission here.

Congratulations to the team for their innovative design and for their successful submission.