Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design, a center of the Doris Duke Foundation, welcomes architectural historian and PhD candidate Hossein Nakhaei as its Fall 2025 Scholar-in-Residence. During the residency, Nakhaei advances his research on 13th-14th-century Persian luster tiles at the Shangri La’s collection, including the luster mihrab from the Emamzadeh Yahya in Varamin, Iran. He explores how architectural elemenets of sacred spaces were fragmented and reassembled in museum contexts. Immersed in the museum’s galleries, storage, and archives, he conducts close visual study, precise documentation and 3D scanning, and optical analyses to examine light–surface interactions on luster tiles. During his stay in Honolulu, Nakhaei also facilitates a video call between Shangri La and a group of Varamini researchers inside the Emamzadeh Yahya. This call is an attempt to virtually reunite the mihrab, the shrine, and the community of Varamin after more than 125 years of separation.