Designing for Mars Now: A Thriving Architecture for Human HabitationChiofalo, Emilie Space architectureHuman wellness in spaceWELL Building StandardMars habitat designBiophilic designSpace habitat livabilityCrew cohesion and isolationPermanent Mars settlementSpace colonizationPsychological wellbeing in extreme environmentsSpace exploration human factorsspace architecturehuman wellness in spaceWELL Building StandardMars habitat designMarsSpaceBiophilic designspace habitat liveabilitycrew isolationMars settlementspace colonizationpsychological wellbeing in extreme environmentsspace explorationArchitectureBARCH Space architecture has captivated the minds of engineers, architects, and visionaries for decades. The field has produced remarkable innovations, from proposals to 3D print structures using Martian regolith, to utopian concepts of rotating cities and orbiting ecosystems. Yet amid this wealth of technical ingenuity and speculative ambition, a fundamental question has gone unanswered: how do astronauts simply live? This thesis argues that the most critical and overlooked dimension of space habitat design is human wellness. While existing research tends to prioritize either engineering feasibility or utopian idealism, little attention has been paid to the lived experience of the people who will inhabit these structures. What conditions allow an astronaut to not merely survive, but to thrive over the course of a mission to Mars? This thesis proposes a permanent Mars habitat designed using technologies available today, including inflatable structures, large-scale 3D printing, and robotic self-assembling modules, synthesized with the pragmatic yet visionary spirit of 1970s space architecture. Guided by the WELL Building Standard as both ethical compass and experiential framework, the design ensures that a crew of four to seven research astronauts can live comfortably in space. Mars's environmental constraints, including reduced gravity, intense solar radiation, and extreme atmospheric conditions, are also addressed to ground the project in realism. By centering the astronaut rather than the mission, this thesis offers a new framework for space habitat design, one that measures success not only in structural integrity and technical performance, but in the health, comfort, and wellbeing of the humans inside.Peter Aeschbacher, Thesis SupervisorOrsolya Gaspar, Thesis Honors AdvisorRebecca Lynn Henn, Thesis Supervisoropen_access2026-04-08T03:50:52Zhttps://honors.libraries.psu.edu/catalog/10292eqc5435