Monika Brandić Lipińska

I am a PhD candidate with the School of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape at Newcastle University. Within the HBBE, I am researching new material practices for the construction of living habitation in extreme and extraterrestrial environments, under Martyn Dade-Roberston, Meng Zhang, Ruth Morrow and Magda Theodoridou supervision. The project is run in collaboration with the “Myco-architecture off-planet” project developed in Lynn Rothschild’s Astrobiology Laboratory at NASA Ames Research Center focused on the study of mycelium-based composites and implementation of synthetic biology for extraterrestrial constructions methods.

I see tremendous potential in biotechnological solutions for building habitable environments in space. Facilitating low technology readiness level construction systems and in-situ resource utilization, tightly enmeshed in biology, developing biotechnological solutions for building habitable, human-oriented environments in space has been the focal point of my research.

My academic background consists of a MSc in Architecture with specialization in Spatial Experiments degree from Lund University, focused on investigation into experimental architecture and design for extreme environments, and MSc in Space Studies degree from International Space University. Prior to that, I got a BSc in Architecture from Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, studying partially at Politechnico di Milano, and was working in architectural offices in Poland, Tokyo Copenhagen, San Francisco and in the interdisciplinary group focusing on space architecture - Liquifer Systems Group in Vienna.