In 2013 Foster + Partners and ESA printed a 1.5-tonne demonstration block from simulated lunar soil: a catenary dome shell with a hollow closed-cell wall, described by the architects as being built like bird bones. Project Olympus, run by BIG with ICON for NASA, carried the idea into the Artemis programme.

The system takes its values from the material rather than the renders. Lunar regolith reflects only 7–8% of the light that hits it — darker than worn asphalt — and Apollo core logs describe it as medium dark gray to brownish gray. Everything here is matte printed stone under a flat black sky.