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Spirit of Place: Students go global |
Eight-and-a-half days is barely enough time for most people to get over jet lag when traveling, but for a group of nine students from Catholic University in Washington, D.C., it’s a period of intense work in far-flung locations such as Nepal, Machu Pichu, or Ireland. Through a program called Spirit of Place/Spirit of Design, taught by architect Travis Price, the students come to these exotic settings ready to build a project they’ve spent the spring semester designing. The small structure they erect—whether a temple, a pilgrimage shelter, a sweat lodge, or an outhouse—does not just add to the startling beauty of its locale; it taps into and expresses the location’s culture through architecture’s symbolism.
Click here to see images of the students’ work in Nepal, Amazon, British Columbia and Ireland.
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Almost 15 years ago, Price had a revelation that great architectural forms are often mystical and mythical. He sought a way to introduce students to the “mythic modern” by enforcing the need for “poetic specificity.” Much like Sam Mockbee’s Rural Studio, which has made a brand of regionalism famous, Price aspired to “counterattack homogenized internationalism” by teaching students to draw on a site’s culture to give meaning to architecture.
From the beginning, students have shown an overwhelming interest in the program: As many as 135 applied for the nine spots in the first seminar. Now the program includes both an undergraduate 3-credit course and a 9-credit graduate studio.
There are three parts to the class: First, students study a site, its ecology, and culture, and write poems and create sculptures in response. “It’s metaphor-driven in the initial stage,” Price says. Then, the students’ ideas are combined until a single architectural model is chosen for them to build as a group. The second half of the semester turns into what Price calls “IKEA mode”—where every single screw for the project is accounted for, so that when the team goes on-site, the structure can be swiftly built.
What makes this program different from other design-build programs is the focus on teamwork, consensus rather than compromise, and the search for metaphor in architecture. According to former student Brendan Rogers, “It was an education in culture, place, architecture, construction, self, and life all wrapped up in the building of a temple in 10 days. This is only possible when the group becomes an organ fundamental to the common goal.” Another former student, Jennifer Doney, says, “In one word: transformative. While I learned a tremendous amount of practical/professional architectural knowledge during the design development during the school year, it was the physical construction of the temple on-site in Bellmullet that will stay with me forever.”
Price’s goal is to expand the program to another six architecture schools and to catalog his ideas about site-specific design into a pattern language. For now, his program will continue to expand students’ minds. “After doing this program, how can a student build a phony Tudor house somewhere?” Price asks. They probably can’t, and almost anyone can agree that’s a good thing.
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