For most of the space age, architects could fantasise freely about building off-world. Inflatable lunar villages and glass Martian domes could be sketched out without anyone having to worry too much about who cleaned the toilets.
That luxury is disappearing as we start to seriously consider the possibility of living in space. Next year, the first commercial space station will be launched – Haven-1 – and will be joined by a second, Axiom, a few months later.
NASA will return to the moon in 2028 with plans to start building a semi-permanent base. A nuclear reactor will follow by the end of the decade, as might the Chinese, and by the time the International Space Station (ISS) is retired in 2030, there will be tens of private stations available to replace it.
The elegant visions of 2001: A Space Odyssey are now giving way to the messy business of everyday existence
And that's before we talk about Elon Musk and his ambition to create a city of a million people on Mars by the 2050s.
But getting people into space is one thing. Creating somewhere they might actually want to live is quite another.
That is where architecture comes in, and firms such as Foster + Partners, BIG, SOM (pictured top) and others have already turned their attention to what might be possible beyond Earth. The elegant visions of 2001: A Space Odyssey and the like are now giving way to the messy business of everyday existence and the problems of extraterrestrial construction.
The obvious challenges are formidable but well-rehearsed: how do you shield people from radiation? Where does the oxygen come from? How do you recycle water?
Engineers have mostly answered these questions. But once people are asked to live somewhere for years rather than just visit, other questions arise. Such as: who gets a window? It may sound trivial. It isn't.
A window in space is both expensive and a potential point of failure. The engineers would prefer a solid metal tube.
Yet astronauts value their views of Earth enormously and "Earth-gazing" is a favourite way to unwind aboard the ISS. In fact, being able to see out is considered essential for morale.
So imagine the first lunar settlement. There are six bedrooms but only two windows. Who gets them? The commander? The tourist who pays the most? Does everybody receive 10 minutes of Earth-gazing a day?
History should certainly make us wary of who gets to dictate what extraterrestrial living looks like
Or, does the window belong to everyone, because something so precious cannot become private property?
The same applies to almost every spatial decision. Who gets a room with a door? How large is it? Can inhabitants personalise it? Where can somebody go to be alone? Where must they encounter other people? Who controls the thermostat, lighting or music?
In a lunar base containing 30 people these are potentially bones of contention. There has been at least one stabbing in the Antarctic, so the danger is real.
And that's before we even decide who gets to run the place. Would you prefer a government body or a corporation like SpaceX or Blue Origin, which, after all, are manufacturing the rockets that are likely to haul people and materials to the moon and Mars?
History should certainly make us wary of who gets to dictate what extraterrestrial living looks like. Take Henry Ford's Fordlandia, established in the Amazon in the 1920s to secure rubber.
That was conceived not simply as an industrial settlement, but as an attempt to export Ford's version of American life: workers received company housing – segregated, of course – but had prescribed diets and had to follow strict behavioural rules. The American managers had running water and got the best views, while the Brazilians had to rely on wells.
The company town is an old model: housing, employment, shops and infrastructure controlled by the same organisation. On Earth, at least, you can leave. What does "leaving" mean when the exit is miles across the moon and stepping outside without permission might mean dying?
This matters because the economics of space point towards precisely this danger. The first extraterrestrial settlements will require immense investment. Governments will fund some, but corporations will provide most of the transport, communications and habitats.
Architects should be arguing about (and hopefully agreeing) extraterrestrial design standards before settlements exist
Commercial necessity can gradually become governance. The East India Company provides an extreme historical precedent: a trading firm that accumulated taxation, administrative and military powers as business slid into tyranny.
Space could easily witness a 21st-century version. Imagine a Martian settlement where one corporation supplies your employment, accommodation, oxygen, water, communications and return ticket. You are simultaneously worker, tenant and customer. Architecture could make that unequal relationship physical, as in Fordlandia.
None of this is an argument against commercial spaceflight. Without private capital, much of the extraordinary acceleration now taking place would be impossible.
Nor can architects wish away physics. A window genuinely is more dangerous than a wall.
But if we are to start producing extraterrestrial architecture, it must do more than ensure survival. A habitat that maintains oxygen while steadily degrading its inhabitants' mental health has failed.
Circadian lighting, vegetation, privacy, views, places for leisure and for ritual are not decorations to be value-engineered away. They contribute to people's ability to function and remain sane.
This is why architects should be arguing about (and hopefully agreeing) extraterrestrial design standards before settlements exist. I would argue the time for that is now.
The danger is not that our first extraterrestrial settlements will look insufficiently futuristic. It is that they will reproduce the worst terrestrial arrangements: workers' barracks, gated communities, company towns and luxury enclaves – only this time with airlocks.
If we leave those questions until the rockets arrive, someone else will already have answered them for us
Conversely, architects rarely get to establish the principles of an entire built environment before it exists. Here we can.
We should use that opportunity to ask difficult questions now, while the answers are still cheap. Who owns the habitat? Who can modify it? What constitutes an acceptable home in space?
What must remain communal? What degree of privacy ensures dignity? And, yes, who gets a window?
If we leave those questions until the rockets arrive, someone else will already have answered them for us. You might not like who that person is.
Jonathan Morrison is an architecture journalist based in London. He was previously the architecture correspondent for The Times. His first book, How to Build a Space Station, was published in September 2026.
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