Lunar Denizens
Lunar Denizens began with Human Considerations: Speculations on Lunar Habitation, a panel facilitated by Sitraka Rakotoniaina for the Italian Pavilion at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2021 and organised with the New School Policy and Design for Outer Space. The panel brought together Fred Scharmen, De Witt Douglas Kilgore, and Tamara Alvarez to consider long-term lunar habitation as an architectural, psychological, political, and sociological problem.
Following that panel, Lunar Denizens developed into a series of conversations and design sprints with NSPDOS and the Santa Fe Institute’s InterPlanetary Project. Facilitated by Very Very Far Away, the sessions gathered artists, thinkers, designers, architects, academics, and scientists to imagine the protocols, folklore, artifacts, rituals, systems, and shared lifeworlds that might shape permanent lunar settlement.
The fictional frame is a report from 2133, in which fossil fuels are depleted, the biosphere is close to collapse, and the world needs a stable extra-terrestrial source of solar capture. The project treats lunar habitation not only as engineering, but as a question of culture, care, routine, myth, politics, and relation.
Published Paper
The Lunar Denizens series was later developed into the IAC 2022 paper Imagining Lunar Denizens: Collaborative Creation of a Space Future, co-authored by Caitlin McShea, Sitraka Rakotoniaina, and Nicholas Travaglini.
Human Considerations: Speculations on Lunar Habitation
An opening panel on the architectural, psychological, political, and sociological issues of long-term lunar habitation. The discussion asks what kinds of social infrastructure would be needed for a permanent solar-capture habitat on Luna, and how design might begin to answer a problem imagined as too complex for the future alone to solve.
Featuring Fred Scharmen, De Witt Douglas Kilgore, and Tamara Alvarez. Facilitated by Sitraka Rakotoniaina. Organised with the New School Policy and Design for Outer Space for the Italian Pavilion at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale.
A Welcoming Party
The first Lunar Denizens session focuses on Mare Nectaris base’s welcoming party. Over its lifespan, the base has hosted hundreds of inhabitants on periodic rotations. As newcomers arrive, older settlers leave and never return. This transition creates a need for protocols and preparations: ways to receive new members, provide guidance, accommodate needs, and allow ordinary Moon life to resume.
Featuring Stephanie Sherman, Simone Rebaudengo, and Haym Benaroya, with facilitation by VVFA: Sitraka Rakotoniaina and Andrew Friend.
Moonlife
The second session turns to daily life at Mare Nectaris. The base operates continuously, collecting, processing, and transmitting solar energy back to Earth. Within that industrial process, workers and their families still have to live together. Their routines, habits, exchanges, and shared engagements become the lifeworld through which the Moon is made inhabitable.
Featuring Nicholas De Monchaux, julijonas urbonas, Alice Bucknell, Nina Lanza, and Ibiye Camp, with facilitation by VVFA: Sitraka Rakotoniaina and Andrew Friend.
Down to Earth
The third and final session departs from Mare Nectaris and focuses on relationality and return. The denizens are not simply leaving the Moon; they are returning to their initial point of departure, Earth. The session asks how they have changed through their experience on the Moon, what has changed on Earth while they were away, and how they reconnect with others through stories, demonstrations, objects, and shared experience.
Featuring Charmian Griffin, Joseph Popper, julijonas urbonas, and Caitlin McShea, with facilitation by VVFA: Sitraka Rakotoniaina and Andrew Friend.