Aurelia Prize 2026 Winners
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.
Explore the winning project, four honorable mentions, and five finalists on this page.
Winner: Tycho
Will Root
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.
Tycho envisions a realistic, scalable architecture for permanent human civilization in orbit—one designed to grow incrementally, operate continuously, and support life and industry at civic scale. Tycho leverages the unique conditions of the space environment to permit its scale. Operating in a Terminator Orbit, it achieves near-continuous solar generation while eliminating the need for solar or radiator articulation. In LEO, its five-kilometer cable-stayed flexible solar array is passively tensioned by gravity-gradient forces with oscillation damping—reducing reliance on active attitude control while maintaining the station’s primary orientation and planetary alignment.
The station’s scale is unlocked by Tycho’s patent-pending “RootShell,” a rigid origami pressure-vessel technology. These expandable geometries allow a single Starship launch to deploy modules exceeding 250,000 cubic meters, without the compromises of soft inflatables or the need for extensive orbital assembly.
Above: Cross-section of a 60m diameter artificial gravity centrifuge showing ten levels of habitat arranged along a gradient from Martian gravity at the outer edge to microgravity at the core. Credit: Will Root.
Honorable Mention: bioARK
Christopher Maurer, Lynn Rothschild, James W. Head III
bioARK builds on research from NASA’s NIAC program to grow architecture off-planet. Moving beyond the cradle will require an all-of-life effort: humans cannot leave Earth without life-sustaining microbial biomes. As we extend the only life we know into the universe, we propose working together - leveraging fungi for radiation attenuation, bacteria for atmospheric transformation, and animalia for construction, exploration, and stewardship beyond Earth.
bioARK circulates water through façade-integrated algal reactors, using them as a thermal sink while generating food, oxygen, and biomass for cultivating radiation-resistant fungi. In this system, architecture actively produces its own materials.
Above: Interior perspective of toroidal habitat with circulating algal facade. Credit: Christopher Maurer.
Honorable Mention: Project Loop
Silvio De Mio
Project Loop envisions a lunar lava tube base featuring a multifunctional architecture: a 3D-printed ISRU-based ring that acts as a habitable structure and operational infrastructure. Positioned at the tube entrance, this construction seals the underground cavity with a polymer composite membrane over its hole. Addressing both technical and habitability related challenges, the ring structure is designed in layers. It integrates pressurized primary functions such as laboratories and dormitories with a Bioregenerative Life Support System (BLSS) that recycles air, water, and waste. Including a robust pressurization system, the ring will also gradually pressurize the lava tube itself, expanding the base into a wide underground environment, fostering a lunar urbanity.
This approach enables a Closed Ecological System (CES) that improves long-term habitability, mitigating psychological challenges of confinement with a subterranean landscape and supporting large-scale agriculture for food production. The outlined strategy provides a paradigm for resilient lunar presence and informs a scalable blueprint for future planetary urbanism.
Above: View inside the lava tube. Credit: Silvio De Mio.
Honorable Mention: Zephyr
Hugo Shelley & JP Hastings-Edrei
Zephyr is an orbiting laboratory specialising in bioregenerative life support technologies. The rotating station houses bioreactors and hydroponic farms, enabling crews to investigate how partial gravity affects crop development, cellular growth, gene expression and other critical biological processes.
The station rotates at 2 rpm and provides 0.37G of Mars-analog gravity. Each semi-autonomous spoke contains a habitation module, a bioreactor with 7 cubic meters of chlorella algae producing ~1 kg of oxygen per person per day, and a unique, self-deploying hydroponics farm. Zephyr is a stepping stone on the way to sustainable off-world habitats, allowing us to develop the life support technologies needed for long-term missions to Mars and beyond.
Above: Exterior view of rotating habitat in sun-synchronous orbit around Earth. Credit: Hugo Shelley.
Honorable Mention: Orbital Emergency Granary
Filip Sledz and Maciej Jamrozik
Orbital Emergency Granary is a scalable orbital factory designed as Earth’s strategic food reserve. In an era of increasing climate instability and geopolitical tensions, conventional food aid systems face mounting limitations. The Granary addresses this vulnerability by enabling industrial-scale food production in space and rapid delivery to regions affected by humanitarian crises.
OEG’s defining innovation lies in transitioning from research station to orbital production hub with substantial growth potential. The system launches with two rings and scales with demand, adding production and habitation modules as needed. This architecture enables progression from proof of concept to full operational capacity.
Above: Exterior view of OEG in orbit around Earth. Credit: Filip Sledz, Maciej Jamrozik.
Finalist: Kessler Orbital Station
Joseph M. Mwaisaka
Envisioned as a vertical skyscraper station, the Kessler Orbital Station integrates habitation, research, and orbital maintenance into a single architectural system.
Above: Exterior view of OEG in orbit around Earth. Credit: Filip Sledz, Maciej Jamrozik.
