Luna

Luna is a moon-inspired masonry dome built as the mission control room for MIT's 2025 lunar landing mission. Located in the Media Lab's ground-floor gallery, the structure served simultaneously as a live operations center — supporting three payloads launched to the Moon's south polar region — and as a public installation during MIT's Artfinity festival.

The dome is built entirely from FOAMGLAS®, a cellular glass material typically reserved for thermal insulation and more than ten times lighter than traditional masonry. No fasteners, mortar, or mechanical connections are used anywhere in the structure. Stability is achieved through compression geometry alone, validated using graphic statics following a modified Wolfe method. Twelve arches discretized into optimized segments enable rapid assembly with minimal formwork, reducing material waste and labor intensity throughout construction.

Luna merges ancient masonry logic with contemporary fabrication, exploring mono-material systems and rethinking how mission operations can be made visible to the public. Its wide elliptical opening keeps the interior exposed to the gallery floor, reflecting a core commitment to transparency — both structural and civic.