Max Fragar, Giuseppe Calabrese wins international design comp
A town planning firm based in the Blue Mountains has won an international design competition revolving around living on the red planet.
The Blue Mountains News
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A Blue Mountains town planning and architecture firm has beaten firms from all over the world and won first place in the international Mars City Design Urban Farming Challenge 2020.
Council Approval Group, started by former Blue Mountains Council director of planning Max Fragar, won top prize with a design submitted by senior architect Giuseppe Calabrese.
The challenge was to design food supply systems that could sustain a crew of nine people living for two years on Mars, and Mr Calabrese’s design was awarded the top prize.
His winning design is now subject to be developed and possibly built in the desert of California.
“Most of my day is spent designing granny flats, duplexes and boarding houses for investors,” Mr Calabrese said.
“When COVID hit, I thought I was out of a job – however, thanks to JobKeeper, my company was able to keep me and we agreed I could use surplus design time on a passion project.”
His submission outlined how rockets could send robotic self-building farms 12-months prior to the first human landing on Mars.
These buildings, pre-loaded with seeds, would then build themselves using AI and 3D printing and begin growing enough fruit and vegetables to sustain 10 astronauts.
Competition founder, Vera Mulyani, said she was impressed with Mr Calabrese’s submission.
“Our next step is to secure funding so we can build a prototype in the Californian desert,” she said.
Max Fragar, founder of the Council Approval Group, said he was “very proud of the team”.
“We are a planning firm, we pride ourselves on having a vision for our clients,” he said.
“This opportunity came up, and the design team had the capacity during COVID, so we said ‘let’s go for it’.
“This is an enormous vision that’s had an amazing positive effect on our town planners, architects and other support staff.”
Mr Fragar said he believed designing cities for Mars was more than a pipe dream, and compared the project to Georges-Eugene Haussmann’s famous renovation of Paris in the mid 1800s.
“It’s just as important as solving the sanitation and disease problems was in Paris,” he said.
“The people who sponsored this competition, they’re all farsighted and I don’t think they’re dreaming too much.
“There’s a difference between vision and dreaming – vision has to be logical and achievable, dreaming is a different thing.”
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