How Can We Build Cities In Low Earth Orbit?

This project brought me back to an idea I had explored years earlier.

With Dynamic City, I became interested in how a small number of components could create adaptable urban systems. POLARIS was an opportunity to revisit that same idea in an entirely different environment.

I like simple systems that create complex possibilities.

Like LEGO bricks, a small number of well-designed components can be combined in countless ways. I wanted to explore whether the same principle could be applied to architecture in space.

POLARIS proposes a modular building system capable of growing, adapting, and reconfiguring over time. Instead of designing isolated structures with fixed functions, I explored how a minimal set of panels and modules could assemble into larger urban environments as human activity expands in orbit.

The project imagines low Earth orbit as more than a destination. It becomes a place where energy, logistics, manufacturing, and future settlements can develop before expanding farther into space.

Every design decision followed the same objective: use as few components as possible while enabling as many configurations as possible.

Pressure-boundary panels integrate multiple functions, while internal modules connect in every direction, creating a flexible architectural language designed specifically for zero gravity.

Rather than designing a single building, POLARIS explores how an urban system could continue evolving alongside new technologies and future generations.

Like Dynamic City, it asks the same fundamental question:

What if our cities were designed to adapt instead of remaining fixed?