At age 11 or so, Sebastian Aristotelis had a thing for Jules Verne. He liked the can-do 19th century adventurism, the rush toward the unknown, the application of new science and technology to going deeper, further, faster. But for Aristotelis there was something else. “I loved Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” he says, “but I really loved the architecture of it. I remember the descriptions of Nautilus, the submarine, the fountain inside, the library, Captain Nemo sitting there sad and drunk playing the piano.”

Aristotelis returned to the book three years ago, just as SAGA, the Copenhagen-based architecture studio he co-founded, was beginning work on Uhab, a prototype submersible astronaut training habitat for the European Space Agency. It seemed like the right time – and Verne’s science fiction held up. “He got the fundamentals right,” Aristotelis says. And fundamentals were very much on his mind.

A long way from Nautilus, the first iteration of Uhab was a 1.8m3 metal tube to be sunk 7m deep in Copenhagen harbour. Aristotelis was planning on giving its first test run. And in the autumn of 2023, he spent 48 hours underwater, in a space smaller than a tight one-man tent.

There’s almost a straight, stubborn line from the eleven-year-old Jules Verne fan to the fully grown, build it and brave it space architect. The young Aristotelis was a classic engineer in the making, taking things apart to put them back together again. He was also obsessed with survival in hostile environments, personally and conceptually.

He did a global exploration gap year after high school, determined to work out whether to pursue advanced engineering or architecture, or somehow combine the two. Space seemed like the place to do that. But in the first decade and a bit of this century, pre-SpaceX, Blue Origin and Katy Perry stunts, space programmes were largely considered a waste of money and human ingenuity. Space architecture wasn’t even a niche. More reading though stiffened Aristotelis’ resolve.

“The Case for Mars by Robert Zubrin convinced me that there was a chance we would land on Mars,” he says. “And if there was just a one per cent chance I could be part of that journey, it was exciting enough to pursue.”

At the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture, Aristotelis met Karl John Sørensen, the only one of his fellow students as fascinated with space as he was. And in 2016, when Aristotelis was just 24, they set up SAGA. “It was a good age to start,” he says. “I didn’t have any responsibilities beyond working 90-hour weeks.”

The pair spent those hours designing, building and testing space habits (SAGA’s operations now include a metalworking studio, machine shop, 3D-printing lab and an electronics lab). And when they weren’t doing that, they crowdfunded and filled in forms and letters, looking to secure grants, sponsorships and partnerships. Aristotelis describes all that effort as “hustling and hard-core grinding,” establishing a track-record for actually getting stuff done. “Lots of people have good ideas, it’s about following through, time after time.”

In 2019, they deployed Mars Lab, a speculative fold-up structure in the Negev Desert in Israel, a useful stand-in for the Red Planet. And in 2020, they moved north, installing LUNARK, a prototype Moon habitat, 1000km north of the Arctic Circle in Greenland, a decent approximation of the bleak lunar landscape.

LUNARK was an aluminium-framed, foam-insulated, folding carbon fibre structure that expanded 750% from its collapsed state. Compared to Uhab, it offered a more comfortable but definitely cosy 17.2m³. Aristotelis and Sørensen lived in it for 61 days.

The egg-shaped pod housed an integrated algae photobioreactor, designed to supply oxygen for LUNARK, and a dynamic circadian lighting system developed in collaboration with lighting company Louis Poulsen. The system recreated sunrise, daylight, sunset, and even simulated different weather conditions to help maintain healthy sleep rhythms during the Arctic perma-dark. (NASA has since purchased SAGA’s circadian lighting system and tested it aboard the International Space Station.)

In 2022, they designed and printed the Rosenberg Habitat, a three-storey space apartment; the tallest 3D-printed structure in the world but deliberately compact enough to fit inside SpaceX’s Starship rocket. And in 2024, they designed FLEXHab, commissioned by the European Space Agency and about to do service as a training and research hub at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne. (Uhab-3, planned for launch in 2027, will essentially be a four-person submersible version of FLEXHab).

Aristotelis’ mission though is not just to design spaces where astronauts and settlers can survive, but where they can thrive. Again there’s a thread back to Verne. The French literary theorist Roland Barthes saw in Verne’s writing a childlike fascination with huts and tents, with creating small, safe, comfortable and comforting spaces in hostile environments.

Think of Nemo amidst the plush steampunk fittings of the Nautilus. ‘All the ships in Jules Verne are perfect cubby-holes, and the vastness of their circumnavigation further increases the bliss of their closure,’ says Barthes. (The spaceship as interstellar safe space is fundamental to much science fiction and critical to the primal horror of Alien).

SAGA’s space architecture doesn’t promise bliss (or protection against alien apex predators) but it does offer organic, tactile materials, soft edges and that lighting attuned to circadian rhythms. ‘When you are in space, what you need is more earthy stuff, things that smell like nature and earth and bring you back home and comfort you.’ You can call it human-centric or ‘space hygge’, if you must. Aristotelis calls it Terra-Tech.

As Aristotelis says, astronauts are now a different kind of right stuff than the preternaturally cool-headed test pilots of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. They are scientists of all stripes and shapes sent into space on extended sorties. Mars missions and the first efforts at colonisation will ask even more of them. Aristotelis is interested in alleviating the physical and psychological toll of these missions. And history, not just science fiction, is a useful guide.

“I think, to understand the future, you've got to look back,” he says. “Take Jamestown, one of the first American settlements in North America. The size of the crew on that ship is similar to what we think will be the size of the crew going to Mars. The duration of the journey, around half a year, is the same as going to Mars. Other ships arrived every two years or so, similar to what we think will happen with Mars. So we can create all kinds of simulations but let's also read those old diaries because crossing the Atlantic was just as alien as going to Mars is now. There were different plants and fauna and people and, you know, arrows flying at you. It was just as hostile.”

If Aristotelis is now consumed with the materials, mechanics and extreme logistics of space travel and habitation, he still has an eleven-year old’s thrill in the adventure of it. And he’s still a sci-fi nerd. Which is where we come in.

When we asked Aristotelis and team to design a spaceship for us, he didn’t hesitate. “I wanted to work with Vollebak. What you are doing with clothing is similar to how we tackle architecture. But also, we just wanted to get back to science fiction.”

Of course, SAGA’s science fiction is rooted in real science and engineering and more-than-likely future needs and advances. “Making the spaceship is kind of a thought experiment, one of those inspirational projects that says something about what the future looks like”, Aristotelis says. He imagines the Spaceshop as an inter-planetary small container ship, a rocket-fueled delivery vehicle.

But if that makes SAGA’s ship sound like a utilitarian UPS-van of the future, the final design is pure, full-thruster fantasy. Metalworking it into shape when we speak, Aristotelis and his team, have, for the moment, forgotten the nitty-gritty of near-future space missions and remembered the shiny, sexy, cinematic and thrilling. “We’ve been so focused on the real challenges of moon habitats, we’d forgotten to ask ourselves what the future might look like.”