This challenge made us think about new ways to analyze spaces inside a restricted volume;
With our project, SHP, we look after the NASA's mission on Hawaii HI-SEAS, to prepare human beings to a 8-months trip to mars and to design an habitat that could be comfortable to them. Although HI-SEAS is developed in two floors, we decided to add a little space with a transparent ceiling at the top of the sphere to allow scientists to observe the behaviour of a little garden in such an enviroment.
A coltivation like that could be used as a "generator" of oxigen as long as it's irradiated by the sun and could contribute to the food supplies of the crew.
With that project we've also think about using spaces in both day and night designing a new tipe of bed that can disappear into a wall where the people can store their clothes.
Under the bed everyone has a 800x1900 mm desk, six of them can form an entire workplace room and a kind of "tent" that has two fan shapes at the sides isolate the bed whenever the crew member requires privacy.
All the work has been done with AutoCAD and that allowed us to measure the living space in the hab, obtaining 30% more space than the NASA's original project; in total we gained about 400 sqft with a total of 1600 or 150 sqmt.
SpaceApps is a NASA incubator innovation program.