Built with NASA award winning technology, TERA is a forward thinking terrestrial habitat inspired by the shape of our Martian habitat, Marsha. Tera offers a sustainable solution for building on this planet, while advancing the technologies for living on another. I lead the design team in this project.

TERA Crowdfunding 

We set up a successful fundraising Indiegogo campaign for Tera’s upstate new york construction.

Click here

for TERA fundraising indiegogo champion page

Built with NASA award winning technology, TERA is a forward thinking terrestrial habitat inspired by the shape of our Martian habitat, Marsha. Tera offers a sustainable solution for building on this planet, while advancing the technologies for living on another

TERA’s rich and playful interior, made of birch and poplar, evokes that of a tree-house. Free of pre-defined rooms, TERA’s various activity areas are perched on, and nestled in, a spiraling form emerging from the landscape. TERA’s open plan maximizes daylight and air circulation—further enhanced by energy efficient LED lighting and underfloor heating to provide year-round comfort

We studied different porosities and profiles based on our material property, printability and possible construction equipment

The first floor includes areas for sitting and food preparation, an
herb garden, bathroom and storage. Along the way to the second floor and embedded in
the stairs is a small library and study area. At top is a queen-sized sleeping pod under a
large skylight.

Marsha won the Nasa 3D printed habitat challenge Design Phase 1 in 2018

The first task for any Martian home is to hold an Earth-like atmosphere. A simple trade study of spatial and material efficiency shows that a vertically oriented cylinder is the best formal basis for a surface habitat.

The layout must reflect the strict flow of tasks typical of Space missions. But since sustained social and mental health are also mission critical, habitats should offer elements of surprise and literal room for the crew to slip outside of an overly prescriptive existence.

In this alien environment, construction sequence and materials must be rethought entirely.

Hydropod is a proposal that looks at a multi-purpose urban platform on water. Water surface would be one of the main platforms to consider as living space. 

Like cells in tissue, or ants in a colony, the individual hydropod is highly capable, robust and adapts to its environment with power in numbers, the fleet will be able to adapt and change to current needs placed on the system.

Each craft was designed with a hexagonal plan that utilizes three-fold rotational symmetry. This symmetry allows for various patterns of clustering, increasing the flexibility of the system.

As a stand-alone piece, the craft design was broken into two parts; the hull, including everything below the floor plane, and the deck, including everything above the floor plane. The hull, like the drivetrain of a car, is standard to all craft, while the deck can be switched out to change the function, or ‘mod’, of each craft when necessary.

The hull, like the drivetrain of a car, is standard to all craft, while the deck can be switched out to change the function, or ‘mod’, of each craft when necessary.

Fog Harvesting Mode of Hydropods

Potopia is a modular smart planter pot system. It helps busy plant-lovers understand what their plants need. This smart pot communicates with user through an LED indicator located at its nose. Through different light colors it can ask user for more or less water, fertilizer or sun light. Because it is a modular system, the user can customize the configuration.

There are some suggestions for the configurations that comes with the package. It can be mounted on the interior or exterior walls

Potopia helps busy plant-lovers understand what their plants need.

Potopia comes in a package of six. It also contains a pack of mixing pot, seed and potopia app. The app allows the user to get updates about their plants without physically being present

Potopia took shape through different iteration and rapid prototyping using in house PLA 3d print method. By embedding a temperature and a soil humidity sensor inside the planter skin, environmental data can be collected. This data later will be monitored by a central microcontroller located in the mother module and would be processed. The result of the processed data determines if the plant needs more or less water, if it is cold or hot and if it is time to repot and add fertilizer

Potting mix packaging and some behind the scene studies

IoT + kinetic design

Robo is an interdisciplinary concept that lives at the intersection of kinetic architecture and Internet of Things (IoT) technology. IoT and kinetic architecture are both more than 50 years old and thinking in the context of kinetic architecture, it would be interesting to imagine the building components like platforms, walls, and roofs could move in an intelligent way.  Robo changes shape when sensing precipitations or detecting variations in natural light.

Inspired by herringbone tessellation origami, Robo expands and contracts to cover or expose the outdoor space.