SRJC Time Capsule

I worked on this project while attending the Santa Rosa Junior College as a member of "The Engineering Club" (TEC). The school asked our club to design and build an above-ground structure that could house a time capsule for one-hundred years in celebration of the college's centennial anniversary. This structure had to both protect its contents for a century, and support the weight of a large stainless steel sculpture on top.

The club held a design competition and ended up choosing my design as the winner. The design is a 10-sided concrete cylinder, with alternating wall depths for visual interest. The top ~5 inches is a separate piece acting as a lid for the structure

One of the biggest challenges for this project was building molds for the concrete. Below is a rendering of the outer mold on the left, and a photo of the constructed mold on the right.

This is the mold for the lid, which uses dowels to create openings for threaded rods and nuts to secure the lid to the main structure.

Here are some photos of the construction process. The first photo shows us pouring the foundation. The middle photo is the body of the structure curing in its mold, and the final photo is the structure once we removed the molds.

Once we completed the time capsule structure, we placed the sealed contents inside, then used a crane to install the heavy lid. We then installed the stainless steel sculpture to complete the project.

A few days later, the college hosted an event to celebrate its 100-year anniversary and to unveil the finished sculpture

I got the opportunity to speak at the event about the design and construction process of the time capsule structure, alongside the college's president Frank Chong and the lead sculptor Michael McGinnis

Some additional photos of the sculpture and construction process can be found on the college's website here.