Having lived all around the world, Vera Mulyani now wants to help design the first city on Mars. Describing herself as the world’s first “Marschitect,” she is the founder of Mars City Design, an innovative project that counts Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin among its backers.

Born in Jakarta, Indonesia, Mulyani studied architecture in France and film in New York, followed by stints in Hong Kong, China, and Egypt, before moving to Santa Monica, California, where she currently resides. She has an ambitious vision — establishing a base on the Red Planet for four people, and eventually growing the settlement to the size of an entire city with over 1,000 inhabitants. The scheme brings together architects, scientists, and technologists tasked with conceptualizing a blueprint for a city on Mars.

Designing space habitats — either for use in low Earth orbit, the Moon, or on Mars — is not new. But as SpaceX and Blue Origin are pushing the boundaries for human exploration of the cosmos, space architecture is on the verge of becoming a much larger industry.

“SFERO” — a 3D-printed house concept. Image credit: Fabulous

So far, most architecture projects for other planets are still on the drawing board. However, there are several such drawing boards in progress — design competitions like NASA’s 3D-Print Habitat Challenge or Google’s Lunar XPRIZE are bringing the full-scale realization of innovative space designs closer.

The field is also not short of more creative ideas for how we could live on other worlds. French design company Fabulous has suggested 3D-printed bubble houses for living on Mars, while ZA Architects have designed underground dwellings dug out of the planet’s bedrock by solar-powered machines. Karan Gandhi’s “Neurosynthesis” includes an artificial waterfall and ambulatory housing, while others have envisaged projects as wild as a Tate Gallery in space or an Olympic Stadium on the Moon.

How seriously can we take these designs?

Space architecture is an “unrecognized, and therefore not respected, skill by the aerospace industry, nor by the American Institute of Architects,” explained Kriss J. Kennedy — an exploration habitat expert and licensed architect who has been working with NASA since 1987.

Mars City Design is hoping to bring Martian architecture to life during an upcoming workshop at the University of Southern California between September 15–28, 2016, which Kennedy will take part in. Within the next three years, the initiative wants to be 3D-printing all its design prototypes to scale in the Mojave Desert.

That’s mostly because, to date, the space community has been preoccupied with astronaut survival, rather than what its habitat feels or looks like. Yet, “in an industry that is risk averse, space architects can offer [useful] big-picture thinking,” said Carnegie Mellon University Mars Studios lecturer Christina Ciardullo, who will also join the USC conference.