Building The Pantheon: A Portfolio with a Mythological Soul

Let’s be honest: most portfolios are boring. Mine included.

For the longest time, my work has been scattered across different platforms, represented by a simple grid of thumbnails and a few lines of text. It was functional, but it was soulless. It didn’t tell a story. It didn’t capture the why behind the what.

The final straw came when I was trying to explain my career path to someone. I’m an interior designer who fell in love with AI and taught herself to code. How do you represent a journey like that in a standard grid?

You don’t. You burn it to the ground and build something that actually represents the beautiful, chaotic, multi-faceted nature of your work.

And so, The Pantheon was born.

The “Oh Shit” Moment: When a Portfolio Isn’t Enough

The idea didn’t come in a flash of divine inspiration. It came from a place of deep frustration. I was looking at my old portfolio and thinking, “This isn’t me.”

It showed the what—a murder mystery game here, a design project there—but it didn’t show the how or the why. It didn’t show the late-night coding sessions, the moments of creative breakthrough, or the sheer, stubborn determination it takes to build something new.

I realized I needed more than a portfolio. I needed a cathedral. A place to house the different parts of my professional soul.

🏛️ The Concept: A Temple to Creativity and Code

The Pantheon is an interactive portfolio disguised as a Greek temple. Why a temple? Because the Greeks understood that art, science, and philosophy were all interconnected. They didn’t put things in boxes. They built temples to the gods of wisdom, beauty, and chaos, all under one roof.

That’s what I want The Pantheon to be. A single place where all the different facets of my work can coexist.

It’s structured around four chambers, each dedicated to a different god:

• ⚔️ Athena’s Chamber (Tech & AI): The home of wisdom, strategy, and cold, hard logic. This is where you’ll find my most complex technical projects, from AI-powered applications to deep dives into system architecture.
• 💖 Aphrodite’s Gallery (Design): The celebration of beauty, aesthetics, and user experience. This chamber houses my design work, from 3D visualizations to the principles of form and function that guide everything I build.
• 🍷 Dionysus’ Theatre (Creative): The realm of chaos, creativity, and pure, unadulterated fun. This is where my experimental projects live—the murder mystery games, the generative art, the things I build just for the joy of it.
• ☀️ Apollo’s Hall (Career): The place of order, prophecy, and growth. This is the narrative thread that ties everything together, telling the story of my journey from interior design to creative technology.

This structure allows me to showcase not just my projects, but the different mindsets and skills that went into creating them.

🛠️ The Tech Stack: Forging Divinity from Code

Building a temple requires the right tools. From the beginning, I knew I wanted a modern, powerful, and future-proof stack.

The Foundation: Next.js 15 and TypeScript

I chose Next.js 15 with the App Router for its speed, flexibility, and robust ecosystem. It’s the perfect foundation for a project that’s both a static site and a dynamic application.

TypeScript was a non-negotiable. After my experience with Caroline AI, I’m a firm believer in type safety. It’s the seatbelt that saves you from yourself, and for a project this ambitious, I need all the safety features I can get.

The Aesthetics: Tailwind CSS v4

For styling, I went with Tailwind CSS v4. Its utility-first approach allows me to build beautiful, custom designs without writing a single line of custom CSS. It’s fast, it’s efficient, and it keeps my components clean and readable.

The Grand Entrance: React Three Fiber and Three.js

A temple needs a grand entrance. To achieve this, I’m using React Three Fiber and Three.js to create a 3D, interactive entrance that will transport visitors into The Pantheon. The plan is to have a central hall with four portals, each leading to one of the chambers. GSAP will provide the animation magic, making the experience smooth, immersive, and just a little bit divine.

The Oracle: AI-Powered Guidance

This is where it gets really fun. Each of the four chambers will have its own AI-powered guide—a chatbot with the personality of the chamber’s patron god.

• Athena will be sharp, analytical, and ready to discuss the technical intricacies of my projects.
• Aphrodite will be your guide to the principles of design, aesthetics, and user experience.
• Dionysus will be your chaotic companion, ready to talk about creativity, inspiration, and the joy of making things.
• Apollo will be the Oracle, providing insights into my career path and professional philosophy.

To power these divine guides, I’m planning to use the Groq API for its incredible inference speed, combined with a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipeline to ensure they have deep knowledge of my work.

The Messy Middle: Challenges and Breakthroughs

Building a temple isn’t easy. I’ve already faced my fair share of challenges.

The biggest hurdle so far has been the conceptual design of the 3D entrance. It’s one thing to have an idea in your head; it’s another to translate it into a functional, performant, and beautiful 3D experience. I’ve spent hours sketching, prototyping, and wrestling with the complexities of 3D in the browser.

But with every challenge comes a breakthrough. The moment I got the first, simple cube rendering in the browser was a moment of pure, unadulterated joy. It was the first stone laid in the foundation of my temple.

🚀 The Vision: A Living Portfolio

The Pantheon is more than just a project; it’s a platform. It’s a living, breathing portfolio that will evolve as I do.

What’s next?

• Finishing the 3D Entrance: This is my top priority. I want the first impression of The Pantheon to be one of wonder and excitement.
• Populating the Chambers: Athena’s chamber is already well-stocked, but Aphrodite, Dionysus, and Apollo are still waiting for their offerings.
• Birthing the Gods: Integrating the AI chatbots is the final, most ambitious piece of the puzzle.

This is my promise to myself: to build a portfolio that is as creative, as complex, and as full of life as the work it represents.

It’s a monumental task, but every temple is built one stone at a time.

Follow the construction progress on GitHub. The gods are watching. →