Architecture of Life -the Life Story of Christopher K. Travis

Christopher K. Travis, the Managing Partner of Sentient Architecture LLC, a Texas based full architecture Services Company reminds me of George Bernard Shaw’s tailor.  George Bernard Shaw said that “the only man who behaves sensibly is my tailor. He takes measurements anew, each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.”

Christopher K. Travis is certainly not your ordinary architect. He subjects his clients like George Bernard Shaw’s to a series of meticulous questions teach time he sees them to ascertain their real intent with regard  to the design of their planned residence.
Why you might ask?
For starters, Travis believes that traditional architecture is based on the wrong assumption that people are rational when asked the simple question, “What do you want in a design for your new home”. For him they are not.

For Travis, a good architectural design practice is supposed to focus like its professional counterparts in the highly competitive consumer electronics design profession on “the conversation with human behavioural factors” in order to relate to and understand “how much you’re able to get inside the heads of your clients and predict what portion of the things people tell you about themselves is accurate relative to the space you’re designing”

Does Christopher Travis’ views raise eyebrows? You bet they do. But maybe they are intended as he says that he wants to “disrupt the way in which people think about architecture”.

He recently caused another storm by publicly expressing his fear in a lecture at the Texas A&M University College of Architecture that “the architectural profession was teetering on the brink of irrelevance” and bemoaned the fact that architects do not have the same role as the designers of the iPhone have, because for him “the iPhone is about design, not based on something cool, but about how people use something in a way that is effective.”

The meagre consolation one can offer Travis is that he is in good company as other notable architecture icons share the same “existential angst”. Rem Koolhaas, the reputed Dutch Architect at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Netherlands recently shared with the audience at this year’s Davos World Economic Forum “that the power of architects who used to make things for mankind has declined in recent years as commercial considerations have come to dominate the field, even as architecture continue to capture the public’s imagination.” He admitted at the occasion with self deprecating humour how embarrassing it was for him to endure being introduced by the moderator as “the designer of the new Prada store in Soho, New York”. The moderator thought that it was a compliment to mention that Koolhaas was associated with a Prada store – little did he know that nothing could be more humiliating and embarrassing to a “great and visionary architect”.

Whatever we may think of Christopher K Travis’ personal views the world is in need of bold, courageous architects restoring the relevance of architecture and architects as translators of the social concerns of our times which are aptly described by Dr. Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute as follows: “We have reached a point in the deteriorating relationship between us and the earth’s natural systems where we all have to become political activists. Every day counts. We all have a stake in civilization’s survival.”

We need activist architects who use the tools of their trade to re-affirm the relevancy of the architectural profession rather than confirming its irrelevance through grotesque space age architecture projects like the BMW World Building which have nothing to do with their immediate environment.