Dr. Christophe Lasseur Discusses “Building on Mars” at EPFL.

Mar 22, 2017 | News, SLP1, SP1

MELISSA PROJECT MANAGER, DR. CHRISTOPHE LASSEUR DISCUSSES “BUILDING ON MARS” AT EFPL. 

MELiSSA Project Manager, Dr. Christophe Lasseur, spoke to a delegation about “Building on Mars” classes that will be held at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) on the March 22, 2017. Courses have been notably coordinated by Théodore Besson, Managing Director at ESTEE. The course title is ‘How life support technologies empowers the transition to a closed habitat?’

About EPFL’s “Building on planet Mars student project”
ABSTRACT: In the case of such a very special building project, the crucial stake for sustainable development is the fact that space systems are extreme cases of environmental constraints. In- deed, they constitute an interesting model as an analogy can be made between Martian utmost conditions and some of the possible extreme one’s that Earth might soon face. The didactic ob- jective of the project is to use the context of a building on Mars to teach an approach which raises the students awareness to design and plan all steps of a building in a sustainable way, i.e. build, with the available resources, living spaces that satisfy human needs and leave as intact as possible the external environment. The paper presents the approach and the feedback of this student project, more specifically ENAC Learning Unit”, which involved 17 students from envi- ronmental, civil engineering and architecture sections from EPFL. All the same, it involved pro- fessors from all three domains, as well as aerospace and Mars specialists, which gave seminars during the course of the semester. The students were separated in groups, and the project con- sisted of two phases: 1) analysis of the context and resources, 2) project design and critic. Both organisational, technical and pedagogical aspects of the experience are presented. The outcome was very positive, with students experiencing for their first time multidisciplinary work and the iterative process of design under multiple constraints.

Link to article:
A. Nussbaumer, P. Zurbruegg, S. Erkman, T. Besson, Building on planet Mars student project, 2013, Structures and Architecture : New concepts, applications and challenges, Editeur: Cruz, Paulo J. S., Taylor & Francis Group, London : p.1411-1418