Although other top private schools across the world turn to the ground for field trip destinations, the innovative Swiss boarding school known as Institut auf dem Rosenberg instead dreams about what life in space would be like for its students. This past weekend, Rosenberg showed off the world’s tallest 3D-printed polymer building, a prototype of SAGA Space Architects’ Space Habitat that is 15 square metres in area. In order to transport the first settlers to the moon and beyond, SpaceX built the Starship rocket, and the Space Habitat was constructed to fit within it.

Bernhard Gademann, fourth-generation President of Institut auf dem Rosenberg, commented: “We are incredibly proud to be bringing the study of the space environment to Rosenberg; we do not want to regard this as futuristic, but an imperative subject for the next generation to understand now. Without exposure to these contemporary and significant subject areas, our pupils cannot imagine or ideate the very different world they will encounter beyond the school gates when they graduate in the years to come. We are infusing education with real life context at the heart of everything we do here, rather than only focusing on pure text book academics. I very much hope we can become an incubator for the most advanced concepts here at Rosenberg, giving space to the most avant-garde ideas, which is a phenomenal opportunity for our pupils to learn and rub shoulders with the world’s top innovators.”

SAGA Space Architects and Rosenberg students from ages six to eighteen worked together on the Space Habitat. The kids’ first imaginative conceptions, designs, and paper models for a space life settlement served as the inspiration for the final form of the habitat, which was then realised through extraordinary, revolutionary bio-mimicry observations and computational algorithms.

Karl-Johan Srensen and Sebastian Aristotelis started SAGA in Copenhagen. It is an architecture and technology design firm that works on many different planets. They are the pioneers of the space architecture industry. SAGA’s approach to space design centres on people, takes cues from the natural world, and prioritises people’s health and happiness in order to produce The three-story, space-efficient building can accommodate a workforce of two. On the ground floor, you’ll find the restrooms, laboratories, and workshops. The third floor is a quiet, restful retreat, while the second is for socialising and leisure. Because SAGA prioritises the well-being of its inhabitants and the preservation of its environment, its habitat features floors and furnishings that may be used in a number of different ways. The form, which includes two sleeping pods on the upper level, raises the ceiling of the main living area, making it feel more spacious.

Rosenberg students will use the Space Habitat as a place to do hands-on learning modules that encourage creative problem-solving by combining arts, science, and technology. This is similar to how people learn in the real world, not in separate silos.

The research and development process will include questions about the well-being of people, the creation of plug-and-play facilities for testing hardware and software tools and applications, and the making of monitoring tools for remote mission control systems. Students will use simulated environments for sight, sound, and smell to find out how stimulation of the senses helps people live in isolated places. Working with automated mechatronics (an interdisciplinary branch of engineering that focuses on the integration of mechanical, electronic, and electrical engineering systems) and observing the independent communication and deeper learning of artificial intelligence will provide them with valuable experiential learning projects that will improve their skills in systems-thinking. SAGA Space Architects projects that extraterrestrial communities will swiftly become a reality within the next decade; as a result, pupils will have a leg up on the competition when it comes to understanding this next phase of human progress.

Data collection and analysis will be another function of the Space Habitat. Spot, a quick mobile robot that Boston Dynamic developed for autonomous charging and as the basis for automated walks with the aim of gathering data, will be a four-legged visitor at the site. Moreover, it will pave the way for students to utilise third-party robots, such as those made by ABB for 3-D printing or potential delivery co-bots (a robot intended for direct human robot interaction within a shared space, or where humans and robots are in close proximity).

Future casting is nothing new for Rosenberg, who has previously developed a Future Park, which is another example of their efforts to revolutionise education and bridge the gap between classroom theory and the real, professional world of the 21st century. Experts in machine learning from ABB and Boston Dynamics, as well as the world-renowned ETH Zurich, have partnered with the school to provide students with hands-on experience with their robots in this cutting-edge lab. To prepare for and influence the future of humanity on Earth, students can use the futuristic learning environment of the Future Park to do everything from growing their own food in cutting-edge vertical farms to using electricity generated by man-made wind trees to power the school’s customised Audis.

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