Cityscapes on the Moon or Mars could begin with a single robot spraying lava-like mud for a landing pad and base camp.
Space architect Melodie Yashar, from American technology firm Icon, will soon visit Australia to showcase off-planet habitats that are 3D-printed from local "soil".
But rather than a "plan B" for a damaged planet, she sees space as the ultimate frontier to explore technologies and bring back tips for better ways of living on Earth.
"Space exploration is an intrinsic part of what it means to be human," she told AAP from Los Angeles.
Best known for its affordable 3D-printed homes on Earth to beat the housing crisis, Icon is also working with NASA on landing pads, base camps, roads and garages for space buggies.
"The reason why it's so appealing to NASA and other space agencies is that you can send up one construction robot and use the local materials that are already on the planet," she said.
Moon dust, or regolith, on the surface could be used as feedstock to create structures, instead of shipping in tonnes of materials from Earth.
"Essentially we're fusing the material onto itself and it creates a lava consistency and once it's hardened it becomes a ceramic material," she explained.
"The resources we're using are completely in situ," she said.
The field also examines the tremendous risks of living and working in a resource-constrained environment, where evacuation is not an option.
"There's a whole slew of human and system-level problems that space architecture encompasses," she said.
She said exploration would be an essential part of any long-term settlement on the Moon, first setting up a base camp and supporting short stays.
Eventually, there could be habitats that are certified for human occupancy and the possible use of underground cavities, such as the Moon's lava tubes, to protect against deep-space radiation.
"A Moon mission is a little more forgiving than a Mars mission - on a Mars mission you're looking at a six to eight-month one-way journey to the red planet," she said.
"You have to think about what astronauts are going to be eating, how they're going to solve problems in an Earth-independent way without help from mission control."
Australian researchers are also examining new horizons.
"There is a thriving community of space technologists, small aerospace companies and practitioners," she said.
"One of the things I love most about space architecture is that it forces us to think about what architecture should be - it represents the pinnacle of technology ... how it can be more dignified, more resilient, more beautiful than architecture today."
Working on space design also echoes the demands of isolated, harsh environments closer to home, particularly when face-to-face with climate change realities.
"Designing for Earth and designing for space are worlds apart, but I believe that the design methodologies can be largely the same," she said.
Ms Yashar will give a free talk about space settlement at Sydney's Powerhouse Museum on September 17.
