Never underestimate the power of a tree fort.
That’s what set the career path of groundbreaking, “generica”-bashing architect Travis Price.
The D.C.-based innovator and Catholic University professor has embarked on a tour to introduce his new book, “The Archaeology of Tomorrow: Architecture & the Spirit of Place” and rally support for a built environment infused with “spirit of place” — an amalgam of archaeology, ecology, mythology and modernism.
This is a revolution Price is qualified to lead, having concepted a green village in New Mexico in the early ’70s.
The mention of Machu Picchu fills and thrills one’s mind with visions of stone stairs leading to a mystical lncan village. The ancient planned community was integrated into instead of imposed onto its environment.
Price’s design philosophy is based on three “lenses”:
» Stillness — timeless, enduring form, function and meaning
» Movement — dynamic “time-fulness”
» Nature — creating in concert with nature, balancing aesthetics (echoing natural rhythms), intelligence (optimizing solar energy) to good stewardship — practices that enrich environment, community and spirit.
Viewing “sprawl, mall and tall” as assaults on the spirit, Price calls for an antidote for the millions who “spend most of the day in a fossil-fuel mule train … a nightmare full of the unfulfilled.”
Price recalls the wild icons of mid-20th century roadside architecture “full of lyrics and humor … the last gasp at raging against the machine and generica.”
Design with meaning, in Price’s book, includes a revival of flourishes such as “swirly squirrelly” accents: “shapes based on sacred geometries … to evoke the gods” — such as the pyramids — and details that “echo needlework and fretwork … seeming oddities [that] had meanings relevant to the culture.” As for structure, look beyond Greco-Roman temples to the simple genius of Silk Road yurts and Pueblo adobe abodes.
The architect explains how today’s high-flying architects earned their wings and prods “ecos, Po-Mos” (postmodernists) and De-Cons (deconstructionists) to move beyond their movements. In some passages, he teeters at the edge of spacy — but doesn’t fall.
Combining the beauty of coffee-table tome and the gravitas of a manifesto, “Archaeology” rouses our inner architect and inspires daydreams of live-in legacies.
The abundant color photographs include super-sensual designs created by the highest hand and Price’s transformation of a warehouse into the skylit library at St. John’s College in Annapolis.
Archaeology of Tomorrow
By Travis Price (Earth Aware Editions; 208 pages; $45)
» Upcoming lectures:
Feb. 15 at National Geographic Society
March 9-26 – Round the World Jet Tour, National Geographic Society
www.archaeologyoftomorrow.com
