Man Made Moon by Sam Jacob
Architect and writer Sam Jacob wants to transform St Paul's Cathedral in London into a live map of the phases of the moon.
With the use of a spotlight rigged up to a track around the base of the domed roof, Sam Jacob proposes that the the city's famous baraque cathedral could become a tool for charting the changing phases of the 29 day lunar cycle.
"The cathedral's dome and the moon would hover over London as though it were a city on a planet with two moons," said the architect. "St Paul's becomes a secular device linking our earthly concerns with the heavenly realm."
Jacob told Dezeen how the idea came to him while cycling across Blackfriars Bridge one day, when he saw a full moon and the illuminated dome alongside one another. "If the night was cloudy and no moon was visible then the dome could operate as a kind of lunar clock," he said.
Christopher Wren, the architect of St Paul's, was well-known for his love of astronomy and Jacob also thinks the project would create an interesting parallel between the architect's most famous building and a lunar globe that he built for British monarch Charles II in the seventeenth century, named a selenosphere. "Wren's building is transformed into a selenosphere," he added.
Sam Jacob is one of three directors at London studio FAT, who created an exhibition dedicated to architectural copying at this summer's Venice Architecture Biennale. Watch an interview we filmed with Jacob at the exhibition.
Other projects we've featured inspired by the form of the moon include an ice cream cake, a dish filled with holes and a lamp.