SAGA Space Architects: Building habitats for the next frontier

SAGA Space Architects is redefining space habitats with cutting-edge design, 3D printing, and digital workflows to comfortably support human life in extreme environments.

Autodesk Video

February 18, 2025

 
  • SAGA Space Architects is driven by a bold vision to revolutionize space architecture through rapid prototyping and continuous testing. The company creates space habitats that are not only functional but also improve astronaut quality of life, shifting from mere survival to human well-being in extreme environments.

  • The firm’s latest habitat is set to be a critical training ground for European astronauts preparing for lunar missions.

  • SAGA’s use of Autodesk Fusion and Revit enable precise modeling, simulation, and fabrication, allowing for rapid iteration and real-world implementation of its ambitious concepts.

What if humans can build—and live comfortably in—habitats on other planets?

Copenhagen-based SAGA Space Architects is redefining design for extreme environments—on Earth and beyond. From prototyping structures in the Arctic to developing a 6,000-square-meter habitat in space, SAGA Space Architects is pioneering solutions that push the boundaries of what’s possible.

The firm’s approach blends advanced manufacturing, digital fabrication, and evolutionary design principles to craft environments where humans don’t just survive—they thrive. With in-house fabrication labs and a commitment to innovation, the team continuously tests and refines concepts to turn ambitious ideas into reality.

By leveraging a fully digital workflow, the team integrates human-centric design—including Circadian lighting—with state-of-the-art technology to create livable, high-performance habitats for space and remote locations.

Watch the video to see how SAGA Space Architects uses Autodesk Fusion and Revit to design space architecture, shaping the future of sustainable human-centered design.

View transcript

Sebastian Aristotelis, Co-Founder, Lead Architect, SAGA Space Architects: Humans have been in space for over 50 years. But it’s always been about surviving in space. Only in the last few years, it has been about thriving in space. If we want to have a permanent settlement on the moon, or on Mars. That’s what we are working with.

We try to make stimulating healthy environments, environments that might even be better than your home here on planet Earth. And that’s a big challenge. My name is Sebastian. I’m the co-founder and lead architect of SAGA Space Architects.

We design architecture in extreme environments, and we are in one of our habitats right now. SAGA Space Architects, it started out as a dream. We started it right after architecture school.

Niklas Munk-Andersen, Partner, Senior Architect, SAGA Space Architects: I played a lot of space games and I looked at space news, and I was like, somehow, it’s the perfect match, where I can use my technical background together with architecture to create the space habitats of the future.

Simon Kristensen, Co-Founder, Software Developer, SAGA Space Architects: Quickly, it evolved into the idea of creating a company that would focus on human well-being in space.

Aristotelis: We want to 3D print. We want to change the world of architecture. We want to innovate. We want to do it fast. We want to test these things in extreme environments. And no one was doing that.

Our biggest goal is to have healthy humans in space. People that feel good, that are healthy, that are strong. And to do that, first of all they need to sleep well. And humans, right now in space, they sleep extremely poorly. We developed a circadian lighting system that simulates a sunrise, daylight, sunset, and twilight, all within the habitat.

And that stimulates the natural circadian rhythm in the humans, and they will sleep much better. We have that lighting on the International Space Station right now. It’s orbiting Earth 16 times in 24 hours, and the astronauts are living with it in their sleeping cabin as we speak.

Andreas Morgensen, International Space Station 2023–2024: And as you can see, we’re now approaching night. It’s turning more yellowish, slightly reddish, and dimming by itself.

Munk-Andersen: I think one of the great experiences we had was when the German astronaut Matthias Maurer, visited it for the first time. He was like, “I want to move in here, uh, right away.” And I think that is the ultimate goal. We want to make them feel at home.

Aristotelis: To enable the future of habitats in outer space, several novel manufacturing methods will be used. But the most interesting one is 3D printing. The opportunities with a 3D printer is that you can just send a 3D printer and nothing else, and then use local materials on the surface of the moon or on Mars to print the structures that you need. And then, the astronauts move in and can live there.

Munk-Andersen: Whereas regular architecture, you have some constraints in one way. And for space architecture, you just have a completely new set of rules. But the game is sort of the same. You have to develop a project within those rules. And that is actually the fun part.

Kristensen: We are very happy that we started switching to software like Fusion because it’s just the perfect tool for collaborating with several people on a complex geometry. That has a lot of different requirements that need to be fulfilled. And, sitting and designing where every single little bolt and wire and cable and device is going to be exactly, it can be quite complex to keep track of. We rely a lot on being able to do a full replica of the thing that we want to make into reality in the digital world first.

Aristotelis: We can also do the CAM programming for the CNC machines or generate tool paths for the 3D printers. We can also do renderings. Then in some of the other software suites like Revit for example, we can do all the documentation and drawings and working together with the municipality to make sure that we comply with all the regulations. So, really here we have, for the first time, one family of software that allows us to go from zero to 100 without changing.

Kristensen: For me personally, one of the best parts of doing these kind of things is to see the thing you’ve worked on for months and years, exist in real life, and walk inside. And, it looks just like it did in the digital version.

Aristotelis: Our latest habitat, the one we are in right now, will be used for the next 20 years to train the European astronauts, preparing them to go back to the moon. So it will actually be probably one of the most heavily used training habitats in the world.

One thing that is very clear to me is SAGA can exist now as a small company doing pretty ambitious projects because of the technology we have. We wouldn’t have been able to do this 10 years ago, 15, or 20 years ago. I know in the morning, when I go into work that in this environment, we can do anything. The people here, the tools we have, the machines we have, the software we have.

If I have a dream in the night, then I know my team can build it the next morning. And that power and freedom is everything I ever wanted.

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