mimicking a glowing moonrise, this pavilion by THEVERYMANY lands in chattanooga

a porous pavilion in chattanooga

Marking the Wheland Foundry Trailhead in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Moonrise rises from the park path like a pale shell caught between the trees. Designed by Marc Fornes / THEVERYMANY, the permanent pavilion forms a porous dome of white aluminum, its surface opened by circular cuts that bring sky, foliage, and passing clouds into the structure itself.

From the outside, it reads as a lightweight object in the landscape. From beneath, it becomes a shaded room, with daylight falling through the perforated canopy in round patches across the concrete floor.

The project takes its name from the moment the moon appears at the horizon, when a familiar scene starts to feel altered. That sense of collective pause runs through the pavilion. Visitors can sit on low concrete cylinders, move through the arched openings, or look up into the layered skin as shadows shift with the sun. The work gives the park a small civic interior, open to the weather and to the surrounding green, while still creating a feeling of enclosure.

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a dome made from thin aluminum strips

Marc Fornes and his Brooklyn-based studio THEVERYMANY are known for structures that sit between architecture, art, and engineering, often using extremely thin materials to produce large self-supporting forms. In Moonrise, that research takes the shape of a double-layer shell made from custom-fabricated aluminum structural strips, each just three millimeters thick. The pieces are joined with rivets, forming an interlocking system that gains strength through geometry instead of mass.

The dome’s surface carries the logic of its assembly. Thousands of seams, fasteners, and faceted panels remain visible across the white skin, turning construction into pattern. The large openings ease the structure’s weight while giving it a soft visual rhythm, almost like a lunar surface translated into architecture. Some apertures frame treetops. Others cast circular pools of light onto the ground, so the pavilion keeps changing without needing anything to move.

Moonrise rises as a white aluminum dome in Chattanooga Tennessee

computation meets public space

With Moonrise, THEVERYMANY also extends a lineage of dome thinking through contemporary fabrication. The project draws on Buckminster Fuller’s interest in doing more with less, then moves that idea through computational design and digital production. Instead of treating efficiency as a purely technical aim, the team uses it to create a public space with visual interest and complexity, where the structural system also shapes the visitor’s experience.

That is where the project feels most alive. The engineering disappears into the ease of the encounter. Children can chase the dotted shadows, while adults can sit at the edge and take in the breeze. From above, the pavilion becomes a white, perforated circle beside the path, its shadow spilling onto the lawn like a second drawing.

Within Chattanooga’s park landscape, Moonrise suggests how advanced fabrication can make room for shared excitement, giving a technical object a surprisingly human pace.

Marc Fornes and THEVERYMANY designed the pavilion to mark the Wheland Foundry Trailhead