When Brian Harms and Keith Bradley found a competition with such a unique premise, calling for the design of a moon stadium, they were interested in designing for an environment with which they were unfamiliar. The competition allowed them certain freedoms not typically present in an architectural studio project. This was the first time the two fifth year architecture students of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo collaborated on a design project and hope to work with each other again in the future. More images and project description after the break.
Competition board text:
Within the lunar colonies of the future, recreational activities will arise and evolve to take advantage of the moon’s micro-gravity. The sports we know today will be modified, and brand new sports will be invented. Lunar sports associations will be created, teams will be sponsored, games will be televised, and people from all over the globe will watch as the best of the best compete in an arena in which all the rules have changed. Welcome to the silo.
This colonization is a symbol of mankind’s great ambition and achievement – the perfect landscape for a structure whose purpose is to provide a stage for mankind to display its great strength and spirit. The moon provides a neutral playing ground on which no country has the home field advantage.
This stadium, resting within a crater half a kilometer in diameter, consists of the following: a large, reconfigurable playing field utilizing digital technology to project various boundary lines and field markers depending on the sport, seating for over 100,000 spectators, a large hotel for guests, various restaurants, a solar-assisted fuel-cell power plant, and communications tower.
The majority of necessities for occupants are harvested and recycled on site. Oxygen will be harvested from moon rocks that are heated by hydrogen fuel cells or low currents from the solar energy system, and hydrogen will be imported from earth with regular lunar shuttle transports. These two elements will power the fuel cell reaction creating both energy and water as a byproduct. The expelled carbon dioxide from inhabitants will be channeled into the green houses located below the hotel. A combination of edible foliage and virile oxygen producing algae manage carbon dioxide and sustain much of the required support systems.
Juror comments:
“The tension between what is mostly ideal or perhaps impossible and what is logical and clearly achievable is necessary to arrive at passionate and creative solutions,” said contest judge Madhu Thangavelu, a professor of space systems design at University of Southern California. He also commented, in regards to the stadium, “This was my favorite.”
