Swedish artist Mikael Genberg may be obsessed with red houses. For 25 years, he’s built them, painted them—even dreamed about them. Now he’s sending a red house to the Moon.
Red houses are iconic in Sweden. Nearly every house in the countryside is painted red. There’s even a national name, Falu red, for the color used on most Swedish houses and barns.
For years, Genberg has incorporated red houses into his artworks. His houses have traveled the world. They’ve appeared in trees, underwater, atop an arena, and at the Great Wall of China. A paper version trekked to the International Space Station in 2009 with Sweden’s first astronaut, Christer Fuglesang.
But always, Genberg wanted to place his typically Swedish miniature house on the Moon.
It was “a crazy, maybe idiotic, but at the same time, in my mind, really poetic thought to put a red house with white corners on the surface of the Moon,” Genberg says in a video on his website. “And now it’s going to happen.”
Moonhouse is 4.7 inches long, 3.1 inches wide, and 3.9 inches tall. That’s about the size of an adult human’s hand. In January, the small red structure hitched a ride on a lunar lander operated by the Japanese company ispace Inc. The lander blasted off on a SpaceX rocket on January 15.
Engineers Emil Vinterhav and Erik Imamura worked out the technical aspects of putting a tiny house in space. Unlike Genberg’s other structures, this red house needed to withstand the intense pressure, high temperatures, and vibrations of a Moon landing. The final product is made of thin aluminum and daubed with a space-certified paint.
If all goes well, the lander will touch down on the Moon in May. At that time, the lander “should release the house, take some pictures, and leave it alone standing there for thousands and thousands and maybe millions of years,” Genberg says.
At a pre-launch party, Genberg spoke with friends about Moonhouse. Fuglesang was there and Anders Lif, the reporter who first wrote about Genberg’s Moon dream back in 2003.
As for the purpose of sending a red house to the Moon? “It’s art,” he says. He suggests meanings for his house: roots, ambitions, dreams. But mostly, Genberg appreciates the contrast of the grand with the small and the technical with the simple of a house in space. “I feel it resonates on a personal level, in a way that makes me think, ‘Wow, this is beautiful.’”
He has made everything beautiful in its time. — Ecclesiastes 3:11
Why? Art is a cultural activity that generates an object or experience with meaning beyond its mere appearance. Consider how putting a human creation like a red house into a barren and uninhabited environment communicates something of meaning for an image-bearer of God.
Recommended Reading: For more on space adventures, see How We Got to the Moon by John Rocco.
