TERA - A SUSTAINABLE HOME FOR THIS PLANET

TERA - A SUSTAINABLE HOME FOR THIS PLANET Welcome home to the most advanced, sustainable building ever conceived. Built with NASA award winning technology, TERA is light years ahead of any known form of construction. TERA’s exterior shell is 3D printed with renewable and recyclable materials which minimize environmental impact without compromising comfort and performance. It offers a simpler, more sustainable solution for building on this planet, while advancing the technologies for living on another. ROBOTIC 3D PRINTING TERA was built from the same autonomous 3D printing technologies and compostable materials we designed for long--term, sustainable life on Mars. Like its predecessor (the NASA-award-winning Martian habitat MARSHA), TERA is built from a 3D printed biopolymer basalt composite –a material developed from crops like corn and sugar cane – tested and validated by NASA to be (at minimum) 50% stronger and more durable than concrete. This material has the potential to be leaps and bounds more sustainable than traditional concrete and steel, leading to a future in which we can eliminate the building industry’s massive waste of un-recyclable materials. It could transform the way we build on Earth – and save our planet. While extruded by a robotic arm, the material in layers will build up as the structure rotates on a turntable, which will be removed from beneath TERA once it’s completed. OFF-GRID LIVING TERA’s rich and playful interior takes its cues from a treehouse. Free of pre-defined rooms, TERA’s “activity areas” are perched on, and nestled in, a spiraling form emerging from the landscape. TERA offers just the basics for a comfortable and cozy existence — a quiet appreciation of Earth and a glimpse into life on a new planet. TERA features a warm and tactile interior made of birch and poplar, selected for their sustainable, fast- growing nature. Prefabricated to simplify on-site assembly, the tree- house like inner structure is mostly self-supporting to minimize structural stresses on TERA’s 3D printed outer shell. TERA’s 24-foot-high, 500-square-foot, two-story space will provide a sleeping pod, a bathroom with a shower, a study area and other amenities.