A Utah architect, inspired by LGBTQ stories, makes a walk-through art project

Doug Staker’s moveable art project — a walk-through “sacred space” he calls “Sanctuary” — is designed to celebrate belonging. Staker said he was motivated to create the project by personal stories from family and friends.

“I have a brother who’s gay, and we were a very Mormon family,” Staker said. “We just found this kind of conflict arising between family, and it was difficult assessing what that meant.”

Staker, who grew up in Utah, is an architect who runs his own firm, Squaremoon Studio, in Salt Lake City and an artist. “I’ve always been interested in art and, really, that’s what got me into architecture,” he said. “I just wanted to do art.”

“Sanctuary” is an architectural art project that, according to the Squaremoon website, “was born from the painful experiences of friends and family dealing with the disconnects of the LGBTQ+ experience in religion and those who love and support them.” On the website, Staker lists some of the stories that inspired him.

The project — which was on display at Salt Lake City’s Washington Square Park during this month’s Utah Pride Festival — is constructed from cardboard, which is cut into square frames. The frames are put together into arches through which people can walk around. The frames hold colored panels, which give the structure a rainbow glow. The arches are connected to create one big structure.

The design, Staker said, is sophisticated — a blend of traditional and progressive art forms, driven by current technology. For example, he used the form of an arch, which nods back to Roman churches, but with cardboard panels in place of stones.

Staker said the inspiration for “Sanctuary” comes from Tempietto, a 16th century commemorative tomb in Rome designed by the Renaissance-era Italian architect Donato Bramante.

“The architect was trying to create this sort of ideal of a perfect form or something,” Staker said, adding that he took that idea as guidance while making a space where deeper artistic questions could be answered.

Different arches, or areas, of the project are called “chapels” and have themes — such as joy, hope and sorrow — that determine their color schemes.

When the project was on display at the Utah Pride Festival earlier this month, passersby were invited to write messages in blue marker on the cardboard.

Some of the messages, related to the “chapel” themes, read, “You are loved,” “Be authentic. You are wonderful just the way you are” and “Joy is being seen as I am.”

The interactive aspect of “Sanctuary,” Staker said, was a part of the concept from the beginning.

“To me, that’s part of what creates a sacred space: people contributing. There’s an aspect to spirituality that’s more like a function and performance,” he said. “I always try to interact with these people that attend the festival.”

The project also has a “reclaiming” aspect to it — the reclaiming of sacred spaces and of waste materials, Staker said. The colored panels are repurposed from waste materials Staker got from 3Form, a Salt Lake City company that makes translucent materials for indoor and outdoor spaces.

“In a sense, it’s trash art, where we’re trying to build something beautiful out of cast-away materials,” he said.

Because of these aspects, the project has been constructed a few different times, in 2018, 2022 and 2024 — each version is slightly different from the previous one.

“Each time, we just find people to share something from personal experience,” he said. “Then their experience of the space is to walk around and see what other people share. That does a lot of kind of creating a sacred experience in unexpected places, like a sidewalk at the festival.”

One reason Staker said he has continued to improve on the design year after year is because he has a child who came out as part of the LGBTQ community. That “increased my motivation to continue it,” he said.

“I just felt like we needed to create a safe space, for people and my own kids, and this was a great direct symbol or metaphor of what we’re trying to do,” Staker said, adding that his children have helped a lot with building the project’s sculpture and bringing in other volunteers.

Staker said his favorite parts of the project are the way people rally around it, and how it’s become a “meaningful community experience.” Showing the project at such places as the Utah Pride Festival, he said, “really gets to the heart of why Pride exists.”

After displaying “Sanctuary” at the Utah Pride Festival, Staker plans on taking it on the road. He will be taking it to New York for the city’s Pride Week at the end of June, as part of a documentary that is being filmed. He might take it to Southern California, and he said some Utah groups have expressed interest in displaying it.

This weekend, Staker said he was scheduled to take “Sanctuary” to a Pride festival in Rexburg, Idaho, the small town known as the home of Brigham Young University-Idaho. “The reason we go to Rexburg is it’s a small Pride festival in a community [where] the reason for Pride is especially strong,” Staker said.

Taking “Sanctuary” on the road is always a question mark, Staker said, because it’s made of cardboard — and there are concerns about rain and ordinary wear-and-tear.

“It’s actually pretty resilient. As long as it keeps holding up, we’ll keep finding things to do with it,” Staker said. “We’re creating a safe space for all of us.”