Capstone Year
Solar Reliquary Capstone Project, 2025. The Solar Reliquary is a contemporary architectural vessel in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, conceived as a cathedral for light and seasonal change. The project enshrines the essence of shifting equinoxes and solstices, turning subtle celestial phenomena into communal rituals and giving architectural form to the immaterial cycles of the cosmos.
Seasons have always been one of the most ancient rhythms of human life. In the past, people were far more directly attuned to them, with days, harvests, and rituals structured around the turning of the year. Today, someone in Seattle might notice the changing air temperature or the color of the leaves, but this understanding often remains subconscious and individualized. My goal with the Reliquary was to make these transitions explicit, to capture precise celestial moments, and to give them a shared form of recognition. By doing so, the project asks people not only to notice the seasons but to inhabit them collectively.
The design grew from both research and lived experience. I documented light across Europe and Seattle through 35mm photography, and paired those observations with the writings of Josef Albers’ Interaction of Color, Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows, and Sanford Plummer’s Cosmos of Light. These studies shaped the aesthetics of the project, from the choreography of shadow and reflection to the symbolic use of color and material. They guided me toward an architecture where light is not a backdrop but the subject itself.
The Reliquary is composed of four distinct chambers, each tied to a solar event. The spring equinox chamber represents the end of winter and the beginning of renewal. At sunrise, light pours across a reflective pond alive with chorus frogs, their sound marking the season’s awakening. Visitors can gather here for tea, surrounded by lush plantings of trillium, currants, violets, and wildflowers that heighten the sense of regrowth.
The summer solstice amphitheater aligns with sunset, where a lens focuses fading light to ignite a bonfire. The fire is fed with cedar and seasonal aromatics, recalling Native American traditions of honoring abundance. The air fills with scent, smoke, and warmth, transforming sunset into a collective ceremony of vitality.
The fall equinox chamber takes the form of a long cone that collects drifting leaves, covering the ground in a dense carpet. To enter, visitors must walk through the fallen leaves, engaging directly with the colors and textures of the season. Surrounded by maples, aspens, and cedar, the space becomes a meditation on impermanence, harvest, and the beauty of letting go.
The winter solstice tower serves as the project’s most overtly cathedral-like chamber. Visitors ascend a medieval-style spiral staircase, climbing in anticipation until they reach a darkened chamber at the top. At noon, a shaft of light penetrates the aperture and strikes a reflective pool, the only movement in an otherwise silent space. The experience is meant to evoke stillness, endurance, and the return of light on the darkest day.
My time visiting cathedrals, monasteries, and basilicas across Europe deeply shaped how I approached these spaces. I was moved not only by the architecture itself, but by how it was filled with people, ritual, and light. The Solar Reliquary carries that same intent. It is a shell that comes alive when people gather inside, just as a cathedral is animated by its congregation. On the appointed days of the year it becomes a vessel of ritual and memory, while in the time between it sits quietly as a moss-covered ruin, another of my favorite architectural conditions, waiting for its next awakening.
By distilling the cosmic rhythms of the equinoxes and solstices into architectural form, the Solar Reliquary connects people back to cyclical time and to one another. It transforms the subconscious awareness of seasonal change into a conscious, communal ritual. Light becomes sacred presence, the seasons become ceremony, and architecture becomes a reliquary for the passing of time.