Architecture of Time: A Museum of Wood, Light, and Impermanence

Abstract

This thesis investigates how architecture can express time through material, light, movement, and spatial sequence. Using wood as both a structural system and a narrative medium, the project explores the parallels between wood grain, geological strata, flowing water, and snow accumulation as physical records of time. These natural formations reveal that time is not only measured chronologically, but also inscribed onto landscapes, materials, and human experience. Situated within the Snoqualmie Pass region of Washington, the proposal takes the form of a Museum of Wood that acts as a didactic tool, allowing visitors to experience time through changing light conditions, material transformation, and movement through space. The architecture draws directly from the surrounding site features - mountains, creeks, evergreen forests, snow, trails, and shifting sunlight - translating them into tectonic systems, circulation paths, and atmospheric conditions. The project understands the site not as a static backdrop, but as an active participant in shaping the architectural experience. The movement of the creek informs the gradual procession of ramps and pathways throughout the building, emphasizing journey over destination. The evergreen forests represent continuity and endurance, while seasonal snow reveals impermanence and cyclical transformation. Sunlight enters through radial skylight spokes, acting like a sundial that traces the passage of the day across the interior surfaces. As light moves across the exposed wood structure, the atmosphere shifts from warm and intimate to bright and expansive, making time perceptible through changing spatial conditions. Wood becomes central not only as a material of construction, but as a living archive of time. The visible grain patterns, doweled joinery systems, weathering surfaces, and exposed structural assemblies communicate growth, aging, and transformation. Rather than concealing construction, the project exposes tectonic relationships as educational moments, revealing how beams, columns, ramps, and layered wood assemblies connect together. The architecture therefore becomes both inhabitable space and pedagogical instrument, teaching visitors about materiality, temporality, and the interconnected relationship between nature and construction. Ultimately, the thesis proposes an architecture that slows perception and heightens awareness of time. Through light, material expression, tectonic exposure, and movement, the project creates an environment where visitors become conscious of their own fleeting presence within larger cycles of nature, landscape, and geological time.