Announcing the winner and honorable mentions of the inaugural Aurelia Prize in Design for Space Urbanism
Aurelia Institute | Aurelia awards Tycho the $20,000 global design competition’s top prize for designer Will Root’s scalable architecture for permanent human civilization in orbit
Aurelia Institute has selected the winner and honorable mentions for the inaugural Aurelia Prize in Design for Space Urbanism.
The judging panel has awarded first prize to Tycho: The Architecture for Permanent Space Civilization from designer Will Root. Tycho proposes a rigid origami space station design, enabling vastly larger habitable volumes capable of supporting thousands of people in low-Earth orbit in the near future.
The Aurelia Prize drew over 200 submissions from designers around the world and across disciplines. “We’ve been overwhelmed by the level of interest and expertise from across industry and academia,” says Ariel Ekblaw, CEO of Aurelia Institute. “My fellow judges and I were so impressed with the quality, variety, and sheer creativity of the submissions we received.”
Announced in December 2025, the Aurelia Prize in Design for Space Urbanism asked architects, engineers, designers, and enthusiasts around the world to submit concepts for near-future space stations, lunar habitats, and autonomous industrial facilities. The envisioned structures could be designed for low-Earth orbit, the lunar surface or lunar orbit, or a Lagrange point, and were required to be centered on habitat and industrial designs that consider utility, benefit to Earth, and efficiency in the space environment.
“Tycho is exactly the kind of well-considered, aspirational, and yet still near-term credible concept we were hoping to find and support with the Aurelia Prize,” says Ekblaw. “Humanity is at an inflection point, as we become a truly space-faring species in this century. There are a lot of incredibly talented people out there putting serious work into designing humanity’s future in space, and it’s been thrilling to see some of their best work through this prize cycle. I think Gerry O’Neill would be proud.”
In addition to winning the $20,000 USD prize purse, Will Root will also be invited to join an upcoming parabolic research flight as part of Aurelia Institute’s Horizon Zero Gravity Program, and to submit Tycho to Aurelia’s Space Architecture Trade Study: a public resource to gather innovative approaches to space habitat design for academics, industry professionals, and the broader space architecture community.
Root is a designer focused on large-scale modular systems on Earth and in space. He is the founder of Tycho Space, developing a new class of orbital habitats, and a co-founder of Different Systems, advising commercial ventures and research organizations on space stations and deployable infrastructure.
“The Aurelia Prize comes at a pivotal moment: large-scale human access to orbit is nearly within reach, but the station architecture to support it does not yet exist,” says Root. “Tycho is developing a new class of dramatically larger deployable pressure vessels to enable that future, and we’re honored to have that vision recognized by Aurelia.”
The judging panel for the inaugural prize comprised a world-class collection of designers, architects, and space experts. In addition to Ekblaw, who earned her PhD in aerospace structures from MIT, the jury included NASA Artemis II astronaut Victor Glover; Bjarke Ingels;
Founder of BIG; Andrew Zuckerman, visual artist; Thomas Heatherwick, Founder of Heatherwick Studio; and Olga Bannova, Director of the Space Architecture Graduate Program, University of Houston.
Four additional submissions were awarded Honorable Mention; each of these teams will receive $1,000 USD, as well as an invitation to join the upcoming Horizon flight and to contribute their concepts to the Space Architecture Trade Study.
Honorable Mentions
bioARK: biogenic architecture to evolve beyond the cradleChristopher Maurer, Lynn Rothschild, and James Head III
Orbital Emergency GranaryFilip Śledź and Maciej Jamrozik
Project LoopSilvio De Mio
ZephyrHugo Shelley and JP Hastings-Edrei
The winner and honorable mentions were announced live onstage on April 8 at Beyond the Cradle, the annual space conference co-hosted by Aurelia Institute, MIT’s Space Exploration Initiative, and the MIT Media Lab.
About Aurelia Institute
Aurelia Institute is a non-profit space architecture R&D lab, education and outreach center, and policy hub dedicated to building humanity’s future in space for the benefit of Earth. At this historic convergence of rapid AI advances and record-low launch costs, we are leading a paradigm shift in space structures, unlocking true scalability for humans in space. From space station designs that democratize access to orbit, to facilities that enable entirely novel microgravity biotech discoveries, our team is paving a path towards an expansive in-space economy and an aspirational future for humanity. Aurelia Institute was spun out of Dr. Ariel Ekblaw's research lab at the MIT Space Exploration Initiative. Together with Aurelia Foundry, a sister VC fund for space investing, the Aurelia ecosystem's mission is to prepare humanity to become a thriving, Earth-conscious, spacefaring species.