Mythic Modern: Architectural Expeditions into the Spirit of Place

"The Mythic Modern" offers an significant antidote to the perception of the American abroad, chronicling a remarkable fifteen years of design-build expeditions in extraordinary locales all over the globe by an international team of architecture students focused on exploring, not exploiting, the local cultures, mythologies, and metaphors and leaving astonishing, affecting structures in their wake. Led by Travis Price, FAIA, who, since his early days in the Green movement has been sensitive to both the eco- and ethnospheres, these excursions find in their designs a balance of the tribal and the modern, the mythic and the practical, the place and its spirit. This lavishly illustrated book takes a critical look at the preservation of authenticity and character in a contemporary design language, along the way telling wild tales of the adventures of building these installations, with illuminating anecdotes and quotes, followed by the back-story of their conception, metaphors, planning, and design.