DUST ARCHITECTURES FOR MARS BASES: From Local Mitigations to Colony-Scale Dust Regimes and Self-Referential Dust Maintenance

Martian dust is pervasive, electrostatically active, abrasive, and potentially toxic. Current mitigation strategies are component-centric — better filters, seals, coatings, and cleaning systems — while planetary science studies global transport and storm dynamics. The critical intermediate scale — the colony as a coupled dust system — remains without a formal framework. We develop the Dust Architecture Model (DAM), introduce a Named Binary distinguishing Local-Mitigation Dust Models (LMDM) from Dust Architecture Models (DAM), and formalise the coupled dynamical system linking external dust forcing E(t), base geometry G, surface operations O(t), habitat internal environment H(t), and crew exposure state X(t). We prove that a Mars base colony is a self-referentially self-maintaining (SRSM) system in the dust domain: the maintenance mechanisms that manage dust (cleaning robots, filter systems, decontamination protocols) are themselves degraded by the dust they manage, creating an IRM feedback structure. By the IRM Impossibility Theorem, such a system cannot maintain zero dust impact growth without external reference — and the 'external reference' for a dust-SRSM system is architecture: base geometry and operational patterns that provide an exogenous structural constraint on the dust field, independent of the maintenance mechanism’s current state. We derive the three dust threshold conditions (filter overload F*, wear accumulation D*, and chronic health dose X*) as the IGT proximity functions for the dust-SRSM system, specify the Strongest Formulation in the four-part template, confirm structural invariance across open-pit mining, desert urban planning, cleanroom campus design, and the proposed Mars application, and provide a pre-registerable Collapse Counter-Scenario. Immediate design guidance is derived for landing pad placement, clean/dirty zoning, traffic corridor routing, and dust sink design.