The Chapel of St. Ignatius, Seattle University
Seattle, Washington

Architect Steven Holl chose "A Gathering of Different Lights" as the guiding concept for the design of the Chapel of St. Ignatius at Seattle University. This metaphor refers to St. Ignatius' vision of the spiritual life as comprising many interior lights and darknesses, which he called consolations and desolations.

The chapel site includes a grass field for the most informal kinds of reflection, and then continues with a more formal reflection pool inspired in part by the Zen garden at Ryoan-ji Temple in Kyoto, Japan. Instead of the raked white sand and twelve stones of that garden, the chapel’s pool features a single rock taken from Mount Rainier. The raked sand effect from Ryoan-ji is displaced to the interior walls of the chapel, which are hand-textured plaster. As clouds move overhead, the light on the grooved plaster walls pulsate, making the chapel an interrogative space for personal discernment of the individual's or congregation’s interior lights and shadows.

Holl conceived of the chapel as "seven bottles of light in a stone box," with each bottle or vessel of light corresponding to a focal aspect of Catholic worship. During the day each part of the chapel glows with colored light from two sources. Light bouncing off color fields painted on the back of suspended baffles creates a halo of light on the surrounding walls, while light passing through colored glass lenses in the exterior windows and openings in the baffles casts onto the chapel walls and floor. Interior lighting creates a similar effect at night, transforming the chapel into a beacon of multicolored light radiating outward to the campus and city.

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