OPEN Architecture has teamed up with Chinese tech giant Xiaomi to design MARS Case, a minimal housing prototype unveiled at China House Vision 2018. With MARS Case, OPEN Architecture challenges conventions of living space and proposes new possibilities for the future. The prototype imagines that humanity is forced to settle on Mars.
There, we cannot rely on natural resources, as we have become so accustomed to on Earth. There, we have no choice but to reduce the excessive consumption of our former lifestyles and carry only minimal essentials. Recycling will be the only way we survive. In letting go of the “extra”, we will come to rethink our lives in a simplified setting. As we find new appreciation in every drop of water, every bite of food, and every breath of air, can we finally find inner peace and discover the true nature of freedom? Is this what we define as the ideal house of the future?
MARS Case presents a vision of this ideal house, seamlessly combining technology, product design, and architecture. Domestic appliances in Xiaomi’s current product lines can all be connected wirelessly and controlled over smartphones.
MARS Case goes a step further to integrate separate electronic appliances into one synthesized product, the home. It will harness and recycle the heat, exhaust, condensation, and so on generated by each different electronic module and feed it back into this integrated ecosystem. In other words, energy, water, and air will be fully recycled in the system, minimizing the consumption of resources.
This is MARS Case, a place of self-circulating energy and zero waste. A compact, lightweight, and highly portable 2.4 meter x 2.4 meter x 2 meter module, from which a “living bubble” can be inflated, collapsed, and folded back within just like the packing and unpacking of a suitcase. An ideal house to explore the boundless possibilities of the future.