Travis Price III, builder, author, teacher, philosopher and ecological leader, has been practicing for more than three decades to “shape an international architecture educated by ecology and mythology which restores the soul of place to modern style,” he says.

His company, Travis Price Architects, has designed numerous houses and other jobs in and beyond its home base of Washington, D.C. — an unlikely place for Price’s aspirations, but one which has allowed him to direct the graduate-level Cultures and Sacred Space concentration and studios at The Catholic University of America’s School of Architecture and Planning.

The Spirit of Place design-build studios at The Catholic University have resulted in a number of installments constructed around the world, from California and British Columbia to Peru, Nepal and Ireland. The latter is the site of several since 2002, including the latest piece — “The Tale of this Tongs” on the island of Inishturk in County Mayo, Ireland. This ideabook looks at how the architect and his students from The Catholic University, along with local architecture students and stonemasons, have instilled meaning in the place.

Travis Price Architects

As Price describes in The Mythic Modern: Architectural Expeditions Into the Spirit of Place, the design-build studios’ focus is on “design incorporating nature and the manmade, an inseparable exploration of thoughts creating thing and matter which makes mind, constantly informed by metaphors who haven’t dropped their magical weave” The studios respond to Price’s assertion that “the poetics of our cultural heritage are confronting a looming loss” because of the “stream of cultural homogenization creeping quickly across the constructed world.”

“The Tale of this Tongs” was assembled as a member of The Gathering Ireland 2013, a yearlong party in which the nation invites individuals from all corners of this world for gatherings in various villages, cities and towns. Many of these people once lived in Ireland, so the concept of this diaspora is an important one. However, “The Tale of this Tongs” also recognizes the importance of the island as a place of cultural gatherings, particularly music sessions.

Travis Price Architects

The studio assembled this “heritage marker” primarily from local materials, using traditional methods, and designed it to elicit historic gatherings on the island, furthering envisioning it as a shrine, a respite, an interpretation center and a viewing stage. The studio refers to it as a locus, a religious and cultural center where the worldwide Irish diaspora can converge.

While Price along with his students craft designs which are devoid of the purposes we normally associate with structure — working, eating, sleeping, learning etc. — the jobs serve a deeper purpose, and tapping into distant cultures and truths, they could offer the rest of us lessons about how best to instill the poetic to the everyday, particularly when it comes to our homes and relationship with nature.

Travis Price Architects

The mark sits atop the island’s rocky terrain, standing out from it like a glass beacon that calls toward the ocean, the surrounding islands and the Irish mainland approximately ten miles in the distance. It’s made up of a semienclosed area with glass walls, assorted pylons etched with the names of local families and stone blocks (some that function as seats, others taller than a person) that mark lines of direction in the landscape.

Travis Price Architects

Cost first came to Mayo in 1999 and fell in love; he’s committed six studios to the county since. With “The Tale of the Tongs,” the team focused on “finding a deep story to tell, creating a poetic place for individuals to regather themselves,” he says.

Studio professor Kathleen Lane says the students “spent a term studying place, climate, ecology, literature, history, poems — tales of this place and of individuals who left and stayed.” The scattering of objects about the landscape starts to get at the thoughts within the heritage mark.

Travis Price Architects

Probably the most literal mark of meaning are the glass pylons etched with the island’s six household names: Heanue, Heaney, O’Toole, Concannon, Faherty and Prendergast.

The orientation of this pylons also starts to define vistas throughout the landscape; Heanue, by way of instance, looks toward the bay in a particular manner, highlighting it in a way we may not otherwise have thought of.

Travis Price Architects

The stone blocks also define views, but in a more overt way. This low and long block points to a distant shore, amplifying it with meaning making it the terminus of a imaginary axis.

What is the significance of that distant location? Is there a connection between there and here? These and other questions come to mind with such a landscape feature.

Travis Price Architects

The cubes also exude meaning through their structure. The dry stones are placed on their sides and apparently sandwiched between the outer smooth stones. It’s as if the rough terrain is compacted into a compact block which sets itself off from the floor via its orthogonal lines.

Travis Price Architects

The openings atop the cubes are particularly beautiful, filled with small pieces of stone parallel to the gap and stones below.

Travis Price Architects

Some blocks were made by piling the stones in a more traditional manner, recalling the neighboring 19th-century Signal Tower, now a ruin. The ironic stacking of the flat pieces “holds” the larger rocks in a way that elevates their importance, like the glass enclosure along with other bits of “The Tale of this Tongs” mark a special place on the island.

Travis Price Architects

The cubic glass enclosure would be the uppermost structure, giving a panoramic of the water and distant beaches while offering relief from the rain and winds. Open on two ends for accessibility, the design is glass walls clipped to stone seats and also the roof, with four curving steel supports detachable to give the enclosure some directionality.

Travis Price Architects

Suitably marking the middle of this enclosure is a steel hearth. It’s here where the tongs come into play: The heritage marker aims to combine the region’s Druidic and Spiritual traditions — after all, the job is located in the shadow of Croagh Patrick, the ancient pilgrimage route of Saint Patrick.

As people converge on this spot, Cost hopes it will be a place to ” to rekindle Irish heritage: the flames, the hearth, and the ‘tongs of reunion,'” he says.

Travis Price Architects

The hearth is marked with the names of the men and women who made it a reality. This spot is charged with meaning, since it’s the coming of the departed through the shared manipulation of this “home fire” that burns within every one of them.

The plate atop the hearth fittingly reads: “whispering flames showing our breaths, yearning anew … rekindled aroma of this tongs echoes our burning adopt in opinion …”

Not every dwelling or location is imbued with such a past or these natural beauty, but that is no reason we can’t attempt to reevaluate our small corners of the world with poetry that’s significant to us. Hopefully this installment offers some inspiration for doing this.

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