MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. When you come home, do you walk into a place that captures who you are? Does your living space reflect your personality, your history, even your spirit? For architects, those questions are often pushed aside amid budget and space constraints but they can be vitally important to how people feel in their surroundings. Studies show that when planners incorporate nature into public space, people are happier and healthier -- not surprising in this era of green design.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIBut what happens when you try to weave in the intangibles in design, like the spirit and the history of a place? That's one of the toughest challenges for architects and planners. But it's one that's being met in architectural plans for our area and around the world. So how does design capture or completely ignore the spirit of our surroundings? Joining me in studio to talk about that is Roger Lewis. He is the architect who writes the "Shaping the City" column for The Washington Post. He's professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Maryland College Park and a regular guest on this broadcast. Hi, Roger.

DR. ROGER LEWISHi. Thank you for having me again.

NNAMDIAlso in studio with us is Travis Price. He is an architect and author of "The Mythic Modern: Architectural Expeditions into the Spirit of Place." Travis Price, it's been awhile, but good to see you again.

MR. TRAVIS PRICEThank you. And, well, it's good to see you.

NNAMDIYou, too, can join the conversation. Give us a call at 800-433-8850. What buildings in this area appeal to your senses? Roger, you've talked on this show before about the three elements of good design. The Roman architect, Vitruvius, said they were commodity, firmness and delight: Commodity, a space that has to serve a purpose, firmness, it better be physically secure, but delight is a little harder to talk about. Why do architects have trouble with that one?

LEWISWell, first of all, the word means--or encompasses a lot of ideas, a lot of aspects of design. It really refers to the esthetic dimensions of architecture, which, by the way, in scale ranges from the very smallest to entire cities, and for that matter, regions even. So delight is -- there are lots of -- we could spend hours talking about what delight means, you know, eye-of-the-beholder issues.

LEWISBut I think it's -- I think the -- for many architects the challenge is that they probably are not able -- once they've dealt with the commodity and firmness issues that Vitruvius wrote about 2,000 years ago -- I think a lot of them just never quite focus adequately or inventively about what the delight means. The delight, if you will, delight refers to things like the spirit and the evocative power that things designed by human beings can have -- and for that matter, things not designed by human beings can have.

NNAMDITalk a little bit, if you will, about an example of a place that people would know in Washington that provokes very different reactions of delight when we visit it.

LEWISWell, I think one of the most accessible things that most people know is to look at the two buildings that belong to the Mellon Gallery, the National Gallery of Art. You know, whatever you think about these things, the east building of the gallery has a very different character -- a very different sense of place and, if you will, spiritual content than the west building that Pope designed in the first half of the 20th century. And this isn't just a matter of style but, you know, the east building of the National Gallery is a building that to some extent was organized based on the context, on the geometry of the ground plain of the mall and the avenues.

LEWISIt is -- it exploits the notion of contrast between solid and void. It exploits the play of form and light in ways very -- and contrasting scales of things in a way quite different from the west building. The west building, first of all, is of course a building that we would call neoclassical. It is a building that alludes to ancient historic grammar and vocabulary of architecture. I mean it looks like a building that, you know, the Romans would appreciate. It's a building that communicates ideas about permanence and stability and order. You know, these are characteristics. I'm defining its formal characteristics.

LEWISBut I think people probably feel quite differently -- this is my, what I would suggest here. I think people feel differently. In the west building it evokes a different sense of place and spirit than the east building. I think it's an easy one to pick. I mean we could talk about a lot more.

NNAMDITravis Price, appealing to people's sense of esthetics is one thing, but capturing spirit and design seems like quite another. For more than three decades you have been weaving ecology and even mythology into your designs. But let's start with the basics. What do you mean when you talk about the spirit of a place?

PRICEThat's a good segue from the east and west wing in a way because Roger said there's spirit, say, in those buildings. And the spirit is really a story being told, something that really evolves out of your psyche. It's not spiritual, per se, nor is it not spiritual. It's that feeling you get, that delight that tells the story. For instance, the Greco-Roman story is so much a part of what we're made of. And that's one reason we love the reverence, if you would, for the west wing. And the east wing is a story about modern life -- the explosion of space, the openness, the kind of freedom that has come with it.

PRICEAnd I think that is a way to nail the spirit of place here. But if you start to look globally and you start to look historically at all of us, we're composed of stories, of spirits. And those are the things, whether they're sacred or whether they're daily life or cultural mores, I mean, to me, to tell those stories in a building, that's what creates memory and that's what I think we mean by the spirit of a place -- the deep underlying echoes of character.

NNAMDIWhen you start talking about incorporating spirit into planning and building, some people might assume we're talking about ultra-modern, minimalist designs with sleek lines, green space and places to meditate. Is that, well, a hasty kind of generalization?

PRICEOh, yeah. We really want to avoid the looks-in phrase. Minimalism with a soul is a phrase we've used sometimes. But I think you -- spirit can be very complicated. I mean you can go to Katmandu, you can go to -- Times Square has a great spirit. And it's a spirit of vitality and craziness and a deep part of our character. So I think you have to really pull back when you start using words like this. They can become a little bit like greenwash, you can have spiritwash these days. But I think you'll find it's -- the more you explore places, you'll find stories and you'll find people talking about their deeper values.

NNAMDIRoger, as architects, I'd imagine it's often hard to make much of spiritual statement in your design, given money and space constraints. Is it often more realistic to get creative inside a space rather than outside?

LEWISWell, I think that probably, for many people, the things that we're talking about here that Travis is alluding to are often more strongly realized and felt within space, you know, where you're in -- which is, can be anything. I mean, the Grand Canyon is a space and a bathroom is a space. Let me answer the question this way, one of the things that I would argue is that a lot of the buildings -- a lot of the places that we have created on this planet are relatively spiritless.

LEWISI mean, I think that one of the challenges that we face -- this goes back to your earlier question, Kojo -- I think one of the challenges is that we are overwhelmed by being in places that -- where there is no sense, if you will, of spirit or delight. I mean, you know, we're -- and I've always argued, as you and I have talked about before on the show, that we're, especially in the United States, we're a very utilitarian culture. This is -- people are quite happy to not worry too much about delight.

PRICEThat's sort of -- I sort of call sprawl mall and tall.

LEWISWell, there's lots of examples.

PRICEIt's -- you drain -- you drain all, you know, all of human life.

LEWISYou know, yeah, I mean, just, you know, let -- help me find, you know, where the milk is and help me find where I can buy underwear and I'm happy. I -- no -- I think it takes -- this goes back to the question about what architects are facing -- I think it takes some very conscious and intentional effort and creativity on the part of designers to impart a sense of spirit both out on the exteriors of form but also on the interiors. Now, interiors are in a way a little easier to deal with.

NNAMDIWhy do you think the Finnish Embassy is a good example of using spirit inside a building?

LEWISWell, again, let's change the verb. It's not that we use spirit. But, for example, the Finnish Embassy, which at one level is a very simple building, it's a rectangular form. It's very -- it's mostly classically ordered with, you know, a very systematic structure, et cetera -- very modern materials, metal and glass. But it's connectivity to the landscape.

LEWISAnd when you walk in that building you actually -- there's a promenade that's been designed, it's been choreographed so that you -- you know, part of the feeling of spirit is the journey you take through spaces in architecture -- and the journey into that building where you go from Massachusetts Avenue through a vestibule and then you finally enter this space, the main space of the building -- a very lofty, wonderfully scaled and proportioned space -- but one whole wall of that space is glass and behind that is a valley, you know, a forested valley. And the connection of that interior space to this landscape is...

PRICEImmense.

LEWIS...majestic. I mean, it's just, it's...

PRICEThey even lights that go out at the floor level floating through the trees...

LEWISRight.

PRICE...to echo the floor. And having spent -- one of our spirit of place projects was in Finland, and we can talk about it, but it -- we designed the project there. We were there for two weeks solid with students. And  Heikkinen and Komonen were the architects. And when you asked them what -- no one could ever pronounce their names, so the construction workers called them Heineken and Corona. But...

LEWISThat works for me.

PRICEYeah, that was great. But the notion of -- if you understand Finnish culture, it is all about that elegant simplicity and regimentation that you talk about. And it's also this bonding with nature in silence. And that building -- this evokes it.

NNAMDIThat project that you designed in Finland, it is my understanding, based on an epic, was maybe one of either your more favorite or your most challenging or both.

PRICEAll. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. The challenge, just to segue into that one, is we were working with an epic called "Kalevala." And the first day I arrived in Finland, I texted about 10 people and I said, what's your most epic, greatest story? What holds you together? I got, six seconds, five texts -- "Kalevala," "Kalevala," "Kalevala." It's a long poem and it's all about this King Vainmoinen. And it was so beloved by an Englishman that he moved to Finland in the '30s and wrote an epic called the "Tolkien Trilogy." Vainamoinen, the "Kalevala" is the Tolkien story. And it goes on and on.

PRICEBut what was amazing about that project was, we were dealing with mass production, speed, but this deep silence, you know, this deep silence. A place you could go into and feel the mysticism that pervades the country. The challenge was, we were on Seurasaari Island, the most sacred historic island, and we were building something out of stainless steel, polished and wood from Karelia, where the "Kalevala" epic was written. The weave of getting all this organized and building it in nine days was a challenge. But you're walking distance from Alvar Aalto Studio, so you're up against some heavyweights.

NNAMDIIf you go to our website, kojoshow.org, you can see pictures of that structure that Travis was -- the project Travis was involved in, in Finland. Both you, Roger and you, Travis have designed homes for yourself that capture the aesthetics we're talking about. Now Travis, your home is just a few blocks from here. It's quite an interesting structure. It turns out I drive by it almost every day. Can you tell us about your treehouse and how it captures the spirit of its surroundings?

PRICEIt's -- you know, the site was a cliff virtually. I mean, it's about a 60 degree slope. And I love trees. And I love trees not just because they're beautiful but because in Nepal I used to watch trees eat shrines. And this created a story for me about saving it, which I had to present, if you can imagine, to the Fine Arts Commission to his royal highness Carter Brown. I got approved in 28 seconds because I wrote a poem about a Sadu (sp?) watching a tree eat a rock -- or a shrine.

PRICEThe house is two steel columns, so I saved all the trees. I hung rods in the ground like a suspension bridge and then the whole house hangs in space almost meditating as a tree. And the beauty of that is it's wrapped in copper. You cross the glass bridge of fear and trepidation but suddenly you become the tree. You become a part of the spirit of Rock Creek Park. That was my ode to the park and also the ode to floating in the park.

PRICEI know that sounds poetic but the nice thing is I got out in 28 seconds instead of 28 months with the Fine Arts Commission.

NNAMDIRoger, I've been to your home. How did you design it to magnify your surroundings?

LEWISWell, I would say the main strategy I used was transparency. I mean, I wanted to create -- and I have to confess, I mean, I did this over 40 years ago so, you know, I...

NNAMDIIt still stands and looks good today.

LEWIS...I won't talk about all the mistakes I made. But I think the main thing I was interested in at that time -- I was about 29 years old when I designed that house -- it was the first project my firm did. I think I was mainly interested in part of what we're talking about, which is connecting to the outside. I was very interested -- because we were on a hill also. Nothing at all like Travis' site but nevertheless a sloping site, lots and lots of deciduous large trees around it and vegetation, etcetera.

LEWISAnd I had to vertically. The house has seven levels in it. It's a very tall house, as you know. So -- there are almost no corridors and there are very few -- relatively few walls. And, in other words, I was interested in, if you will, the notion of interconnectivity both within the house and to the world outside, the landscape outside. And that was -- that's the simplest way I think I can articulate it.

NNAMDIGot to take a short break. If you have called, stay on the line. We will get to your calls. If you'd like to call the number's 800-433-8850. Have you seen structures that really capture the spirit of their surroundings? Tell us about them, 800-433-8850. You can send email to kojo@wamu.org or send us a Tweet at kojoshow. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back to our conversation about the spirit of place. We're talking with Travis Price. He's an architect and author of "The Mythic Modern: Architectural Expeditions into the Spirit of Place," and Roger Lewis, who writes the Shaping the City column for the Washington Post and is professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Maryland College Park. Travis, for 18 years you've been taking expeditions all over the world with students to create installations that capture what we're talking about. Could you tell us about what happens on a spirit of place expedition?

PRICEYes, it all starts with some extraordinary place in the world. And I’m also an adjunct professor at Catholic University where I teach architecture. And we, years ago, talked about taking a few students with Wade Davis, the great explorer from National Geographic, and building something that represents a distant culture in its distant landscape, and to design it on semester and build it in nine days.

PRICEAnd the trail started with a couple of outhouses literally, up in the Yukon, which we called momentous monuments to movement. We actually won an AIA award that year and it's gone all across the globe...

NNAMDIYeah, being the American Institute of Art.

PRICE...of architects design work which was the ultimate humor. But it really was a fun idea. It started with a great anthropologist and myself and students. And Stanley Hallet, who did the film about a recent project, was dean then. But what it grew into was a global look from Peru to Nepal. We've done Machu Picchu. It's all over the world now. And it's -- really what happens is we design something where we try and grab the story of that culture, put it in a poem, in a sculpture, a gesture even with your hands.

PRICEAnd suddenly like any metaphor, that drives a form. We arrived there, after a lot of fundraising and hellacious work on my part with the clients, to a site. And in nine days -- I call it sort of the IKEA moment, some assembly required. Somehow hook or crook we build these extraordinary projects in nine days. And the last five have just been over the top.

NNAMDIYou mention Nepal, Finland and Italy among other places. But talk about last year's trip because it took you to Ireland where you built an installation on an island in County Mao. Tell us about that project.

PRICEWell, people in Dublin sort of cringe if they say you're going to County Mao. It's the wild west, truly the great west side of Ireland. And Inishturk is an island off the coast nine miles. And this was the year of the gathering where the Irish were being brought back to water their roots. It was a big wave. We literally went to the island, were given a site between two 6,000-year-old ruins to build a place for people to gather.

PRICEAnd the Tale of the Tongs, which is an ancient Irish tale, is about sort of taking your tongs if you're leaving on a coffin boat or going to America or to an Irish -- the British coalmine. And you put this coal inside your -- from your fire with your tong and your mother, your father's fire, but you leave your tong lying by the fire on the day you might return and take a coal with your tong and relight your fire.

PRICESo we built this extraordinary project out of steel, glass and a lot of stone and a lot of sod on this promenade looking back nine miles to the coast of Ireland in nine days. And it was an immense gathering. Even the genographic -- the National Geographic came and did swabs of everyone, including the prime minister to gather all the roots together.

PRICEThe architecture is now being called hycropolis (sp?) of Ireland but it did win the vest municipal project of the year for all of Ireland. And it's...

NNAMDIAnd there's a documentary about the creation of this memorial at the D.C. Environmental Film Festival next Monday. There will be two screenings on Monday evening of the film called "Tale of the Tongs." Where will that take place and what time?

PRICEAt the school of architecture at 7:00 pm on Monday is the first showing for an hour. And the second showing is at 9:00. The filmmakers Stanley and Judy Hallet will be there as well as a number of people from Ireland coming for this premier. A really extraordinarily well-made film about the making of this project.

NNAMDIAt Catholic University.

PRICECatholic University, School of Architecture. And you can call them to RSVP. We're filling up rapidly.

NNAMDII'd imagine that when you're asking people to come up with designs inspired by spirit, inspired by nature, some of those designs, some of those, I guess, ideas, suggestions can be pretty abstract and probably impractical. How do you work with a vision to make it functional in the real world?

PRICEYou know, it's a good -- it's the question. Some of the most important things when we -- just to jump back to my house for a minute, people say, well you're talking about flotation and trees and all these ethereal things. And I say, well let's try friction and gravity, if we want to talk about invisibility. Let's look at things that power us. And really the only way to get that power is if you looked at a synagogue, a church, a mosque, a Hindu shrine, you would being to realize that there are certain emotions that each of those religious projects evoke, just like a museum might, or some of the great museums and other buildings.

PRICEYou have to find that and you have to find a gesture that when you walk in, that space actually creates that emotion for you. And people have that in them. And when you make a space -- as Churchill once said, first we shape our buildings. Thereafter they shape us. And we are the shapers of those shapes. And finding that little metaphor, that little description, you'd be shocked how quickly it can turn into a shape and into a building. And you have a visceral reaction to that when you walk in.

NNAMDIRoger, how can the rest of us capture, if you will, the spirit of our surroundings or ourselves in our homes even if we don't have the big budgets that renovation sometimes requires?

LEWISWell, the first thing I would point out is this isn't necessarily budget-dependent. I mean, you don't necessarily have to spend a lot of money to achieve delight. And the other thing that we should talk about a couple of minutes is the fact that there are differences in the -- among projects. I mean, if I -- designing a Wal-Mart is not the same experience as designing a church. Or designing a pad -- a freestanding pad restaurant in some shopping center, you know, is a completely different -- presents a completely different project challenge than designing a library or a museum or a city hall.

LEWISI'm saying that because I think any architects listening to us right now would probably want to underscore the fact that certain kinds of projects lend themselves to achieving a sense of spirit and a sense of delight more than others. That's not to say that you can't design anything well. But for me at least there's no question that if I'm designing a house, I have more opportunity to explore the things we're talking about than if I'm designing a school.

LEWISAlthough I did design a school. About 15 years ago I designed a middle school out in Charles County, very tight budget, very highly constrained. Most of the clients were retired Corp of Engineers people. And I had relatively few variables. I could play with the masonry pattern, I could play with color, I could play with light. And I think I was able to do about as much as one could do to discover -- you know, to find the narrative and imbue spirit as I could do, but in a much more constrained way than if I were designing, you know, a synagogue or a church or a library.

PRICEYou're spot on with it. And, you know, I think of Site, this firm years ago that did these amazing Kmarts or Wal-marts. They made it fun. They made it delightful, cute, humorous. And there is this bit of learning from Las Vegas that even, I think, commercial building -- let's take the average person walking down the street. All these new developments, the cathedral commons, this fake traditionalism we call it in architecture. And that's not said with snobbery because there is a story being told. They're a classical story and people take delight in it.

PRICEBut in many ways they're very big budget projects. There's a lot going on and, you know, I always call out to architects, so go a little deeper. Stop Xeroxing the Romans for a change and look at a better story. Find out who your culture is. Can you, like a lot of places in the world and on very tight, tight budgets. My god, we just did a women's shelter for the government in Ithaca, N.Y. as an architect. And we found a whole story in their story about different windows of their lives. And we came in under budget on a government budget.

PRICEI think if you challenge the architects to find that spirit, the budget, really I agree with Roger, is not -- should not be the issue.

NNAMDIWhich is what Gloria in Washington, D.C. wants to ask about. Gloria, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

GLORIAThank you, Kojo. I appreciate you taking my call. Gentlemen, I wanted to follow up, although you're talking about being able to come under budget, in a lot of communities throughout Washington, D.C. you have people who make less than $50,000 in residential communities. They want to make their space the kind of aesthetic that you're talking about on the program. I would like to know what kinds of residential projects have you seen that are targeted for this particular demographic. And who are the architects who specialize in this kind of work?

NNAMDIRoger.

LEWISWell, that's a very -- that's a question that I think I would answer by first admitting that I've designed a lot of housing. A lot of my practice was multiunit housing, projects for just the kind of people you're talking about. It's a challenge because again the budget constrain what you can do. But again, a lot of what we do in the projects that I've worked on, we take exactly the things that Travis is talking about. We look at the site, we look at the community.

LEWISWe did a scattered site project years ago in the late '70s on the eastern shore of Maryland. There is a landscape there. There is a context. It's very -- it's not topographically very rich but there's something there. And we -- what we primarily had to do to imbue that with some aesthetic potential was work not so much with what happens inside the units. Because in a 500 square foot one-bedroom apartment there's not a whole lot of things you can do, but just making moves with the size of windows and what do the windows look out and how you arrange the buildings, how you enclose space or explode space, that you create by the arrangement, the site planning.

LEWISI mean, there are things that you can do that don't cost any money -- that really don't cost any money. There are architects that do housing. I think a lot of them don't do very interesting work or very compelling work unfortunately.

NNAMDII want to refer to a column that you wrote last year, because daylight seems to be a crucial element of keeping us healthy and happy in our living and work spaces. That column was about something called chronotherapy. What is that and how can people incorporate it into our spaces? Because it seems to me that that's one of the things that somebody like Gloria would be able to do.

LEWISWell, and that was a book -- well, chronotherapy's about recognizing our circadian rhythms. The body has a natural rhythm for sleep and being awake. And one of the things they found is that a key factor in making you healthy has to do with having enough light at the right time of the day, and then when you need to sleep, getting rid of the light. And the problem in chronobiology is the general subject area.

LEWISThe scientists have found that a lot of people are unhappy, depressed, have all kinds of problems partly because they are not exposed to enough light at the right times of the 24-hour cycle. So the notion is that architects could do more in recognizing this, could do a better job of designing buildings such as having windows...

PRICEAnd this is all new buildings. And if you're -- after that, you're right, you get into 3, 4, 500, 800 square foot apartment, I always tell people the best story to be told, the best way to get spirit of a place is you put it on the walls yourself. That's pretty much what you get. But back to this light issue, I think that's why the environmental movement is so strong in the design world. It's not BTUs on the head of a pin or carcinogens, it's re-feeling the natural rhythm of every season.

PRICEAnd so the architect really has to not only pay attention to light, but all -- where the windows are at what time of the year. And, you're right, that's a no-cost difference. It's just a thinking difference.

NNAMDIGloria, thank you very much for your call.

GLORIAThank you.

NNAMDIWe got an email from Joan, Travis, who writes, "I have just begun to read "The Poetics of Space" by Gaston Bachelard. He speaks of the way in which we humans experience place and space. Has this text influenced your thinking about architecture and space?"

PRICEUnfortunately not yet but plan to go right down to Politics and Prose and get a copy. But I think that is the heart, if you would, in phrase of what we're trying to teach in design at Catholic University as well as globally. I've gone all over about this subject. You have to search out the poetry. When you walk down a great street, an old street, those stories tell is. And when you go in spaces, the trim, the detail, everything tells that story. And that poetry, it's like a cloak that you put on that really fits you, a pair of shoes that fit you.

LEWISI should point out that sometimes the story isn't obvious. I mean, I think that what -- I think what we architects do is we find that the narratives -- the cultural narrative and history of a place can inform the design, how we design it. You know, the French have a term for architecture (speaks foreign language) , architecture that speaks. And the challenge of course is there -- or not the challenge -- the reality is that not everybody will interact with a building or a space and necessarily immediately understand what the narrative was, what the architect was thinking about or, you know, what the poetics were.

LEWISBachelard, by the way, was -- I taught design theory years ago. And that was one of the books on my reading list. So it's a very, very well-known book in the…

PRICEI'll get you a copy, too.

LEWISI think I have a copy in my library. If you ask me what's in it, I don't remember in detail. But I mean the notion about experiencing space is part of what we're talking about here this morning, which is it is the experiential quality that excites us architects, that makes us want to find these ways, these entrees into making great space and great architecture.

NNAMDIOnto Fred, in Delray Beach, Fla. Fred, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

FREDYeah, greetings. It's interesting listening to architect talk, but supposing you layer that -- go down a couple of layers and you look at it from the point of view of how people might experience a building, a sense of place, where is it comfortable? How do people come into a place and feel sort of relaxed and excited about being there? Are there destinations?

FREDI always think of Washington as almost placeless. Pennsylvania Avenue is all about buildings that go and you look at, but you don't really participate very much. You know, the whole area around the Verizon Center is like a wasteland, and so on. And where are those -- how can architecture create that place that people don't just admire from looking at it, but…

PRICEThat's a really…

FRED…feel really good about being in it?

PRICEThat's a really great point because, you know, I often call it -- sometimes it's been called -- Washington's been called the world's largest classical theme park, that you walk around and see what the Greeks would abhor because it's so white and it's not polychromatic, it's not fun, it's not engaging. But -- and by the way, I don't know if you've seen the Verizon Center lately, but it's about as robust as it gets with people and life. It's actually one of the most comfortable…

LEWISYeah, 7th Street.

PRICE…urban fabrics in Washington right now because it's a bit of Adams Morgan meets, you know, upscale stuff. It's where all of it collides. And I think that comfort, down a notch, is a lot about -- I think when Roger and I are talking, we know we're talking about budget, we're talking about function and making comfortable and interaction happen. But this idea of spirit of place, I think is one of the great comfort zones.

PRICEWhen I walk into places where I feel it's a part of my character, it reflects who I am, I'm even more comfortable. I mean, go to the other extreme. Go to an all-white, sterile mall. Or, you know, a really bad bar where there's so many fake interior decor that's supposed to create a stage set for you or a screenplay or a storyboard. You know, immediately, that it's transient. That it's not comfortable. So I would say the shapes and forms really do make things comfortable. Activities make it comfortable. And all we can do as builders or architects is make the spaces talk a little more to who you are.

NNAMDIGot to take a short break. When we come back we'll take more of your calls. What do your favorite spaces look like? 800-433-8850. What cities best incorporate old and new design, in your view? You can send us an email to kojo@wamu.org. We're talking about the spirit of place. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIBack to our conversation about the spirit of place. We're talking with Travis Price. He's an architect and author of "The Mythic Modern: Architectural Expeditions into the Spirit of Place." And Roger Lewis is an architect who writes the "Shaping the City" column for the Washington Post, and is professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Maryland, College Park.

NNAMDITravis, your "Spirit of Place" installations have received a number of prestigious awards for their design, but let's talk about how your approach to design translate into this area. We can see a lot of examples of your work nearby, from the gift shop at National Geographic, to the Oseh Shalom Synagogue in Laurel, where we once did a "Kojo in Your Community" a few years ago.

NNAMDIWhen you're sitting down making plans for a gift shop or a restaurant, how do you honor that sense of place, even where there may not be that much to work with?

PRICEThat's the -- what in architecture jargon is called a programming stage, where you're actually setting the agenda for the requirements of a project. For instance, just outside the studio two weeks ago, we had a session with all the neighbors of the Van Ness area.

NNAMDIYes.

PRICEWhen I did the synagogue we had -- actually at the Krishna Temple in Potomac this Saturday I'll be doing it. And I go through the list, but the most important part of the list is to get people to talk about their emotions. To get them to talk about their stories and their experiences. And, you know, if you study people enough, if you study history enough, you can start to fabricate that telling of the tale.

PRICEAnd that, I think, is a new improved agenda that all our architects need to do, besides the practical and the formal, they need to really ask these deeply educated questions that they get from the people they're working for. You get the users together, you evoke it from them, but you also have to be trained in how to explain that back into form.

NNAMDIAnd, Roger, this may relate to the last caller we had. Is Washington, D.C. a pretty tough place to experiment with modern architectural concepts because it's generally pretty conservative about design?

LEWISWell, as you and I have talked a lot about how conservative Washington is in matters of design. And this is not a city -- let's say comparing it to Los Angeles where there's a willingness to experiment and accept the notion that design, invention and innovation is desirable, is something to push for. So I certainly have always felt that it was a bit of a challenge for architects who were interested in being more exploratory in their design work to get it through.

LEWISWe have lots more reviews, we have lots more -- not necessarily truly aesthetic reviews, but there's more hoops to jump through to get projects implemented here. I think many of the clients in this city are more comfortable doing what they saw working yesterday or that they thought of as representing their taste, their conservative taste. So Washington isn't Los Angeles or isn't even, for that matter, Paris or London.

LEWISOn the other hand, certainly in the last 20 to 30 years I think there's been -- I think architects have had a better chance at exploring design ideas that have not necessarily -- you wouldn't all traditional -- then they had previously. And so I'm upbeat. I'm optimistic about the receptivity.

NNAMDIWell, Oliver, in Washington, D.C. wants to talk about a couple of buildings that exist in Washington today. Oliver, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

OLIVEROkay. First of all, thank you for taking my call. It's really hard to narrow down the buildings I want to talk about because of all the interesting subjects you're bring up, but as far as buildings with warmth -- I work at night. And after getting off work, it's a building that I go to to look for warmth, and that has an inviting look to it is a railroad station building. And it's the Union Station building.

OLIVERI just think that that building has a great outside, that's fronted with large columns. And when you go inside it's an open, airy space. So it's just inviting. And do you think buildings like that and then say, for instance, the old railroad station in Pennsylvania that was demolished in 1963, the Pennsylvania Railroad Station. Do you think buildings of that size will be resurrected at any point in time in the future?

NNAMDIAnd, Travis Price, I'd like to add, what do you see as being the spirit inside a building like Union Station?

PRICEWell, I think Union Station is a great example of revived Beaux-Arts, if you would. It has great -- the front has all sorts of storytelling in the carving, but the joy really is that the real delight is awe. It lifts you, it entertains your eye, it's acoustically wonderful. These are the great joy buildings that used to be the statute of all civic work. Whether it'll revive or not, that's hard to say.

PRICEBut I do think that building has a great spirit because it's about transients and coming to a still spot. It's classic in the sense that you look at it, but you also -- I say for most people it's the perfect transitional building, sunshine, highways and temples. You've got big open space, light, warmth. You've got this big highway, this big open space. Lots of people. And it's a -- really it's a temple when you look at it. It's an object there. And so you'll always look at it as a beacon.

NNAMDIThank you very much for your call. Roger, we got an email from Miguel, who said, "I hail from Barcelona, but I live near Washington, D.C. I'd like to hear what the guest thinks about architects like Santiago Calatrava, who may be a perfect example of focusing in the spiritual part and forgetting the functional part. I remember a case in which his studio forgot to put the bathrooms in a museum.

NNAMDI"And his response was, 'A genius like me can't focus on small details like that.' Calatrava," says Miguel, "may be the best example, but there's a bunch of world-renowned architects who act like that." Roger, you know Santiago Calatrava.

LEWISWell, yeah, the way I would answer that question is that Calatrava does worry about functionality. I mean, I think it's an unfair accusation or indictment to say he doesn't worry about it. What's interesting about Calatrava to me is, you know, he's an educated as an engineer, as well as being an architect. And he has essentially taken an approach which, in my view, is not unlike what the gothic cathedral builders did, which is to take the, if you will, the technology of structure, how you, you know, what the skeleton is…

PRICESkeleton is.

LEWIS…of structure. And essentially said I can make poetry this. I can make buildings that are, in fact, sculptural by how I fashion the skeleton of those buildings. And I can use that to shape space. I can make railroad stations. I can make bridges. I can make transportation terminals, etcetera. I think that he -- when I met him and had a long conversation about an exhibit that was opening in St. Petersburg, Russia, a couple years ago.

LEWISAnd he was very -- he insisted that he's -- quoting Patruegus (sp?), "He's just as worried about commodity and firmness and he is about the light." And I -- so I, you know, I think you can quibble about some of his projects, Whether they're exactly the thing that you would have done, but I think we should recognize that he, like most good architects, does try and solve the problem, as well as create…

PRICEOh, yeah, there's a lot of vanilla boxes that forget the bathroom as well.

NNAMDITravis, last week…

LEWISI'm in studio, but we should -- both of us sitting here have taught architecture. I mean, believe me, when students sit down to design things in studios, a lot gets left out.

NNAMDITravis, last week we were in what's called the NoMa in Washington, where a lot of old neighborhoods and small businesses are being replaced by sleeker, high-rise housing and retail. How does height enter into the equation when we talk about capturing delight in design? I notice that not many of the installations you've built around the world are not much taller than a story or of two, unless, of course, they're perched in the trees.

PRICEYeah, that was four floors hanging in the trees. But I've gone up to eight to ten stories. Roger and I were talking about this before, and I think it's really not about height, as much as it's the proportion. And one of the great classic things you have about Washington and most great cities is, it's that ratio of height, street, width that can make something high beautiful or make it oppressive.

PRICENow, when you see some of these new buildings going up in D.C. I've noticed they've almost began to borrow from Florence and places where they're making the streets really tight and the buildings quite tall. And you know what? It feels good. You feel cozied. So I think the experiments that are going on -- back to this modern ethos in Washington, at NoMa, all the way out to the Hecht Building, which is now being remodeled, there's a great playfulness that's become -- starting to overwhelm Washington as it's developing.

PRICEAnd I don't -- I'm sorry, I'm drifting from height.

NNAMDIWell…

PRICEBut height is really a function.

NNAMDII'm glad you went to playfulness. Because we're running out of time and Ken, in Gaithersburg, Md., wants to talk about a city that's kind of noted for its playfulness. Ken, your turn.

KENYes, absolutely. Thank you. If I had to pick one city in the world that I would choose to live in for its warmth and its playfulness and its sense of proportion and its marvelous mix of old and new without pretense, I would say Paris. And on the flip side, just the opposite, I would say London or Los Angeles, which are cities that have completely lost sight of proportion and warmth and human scale.

NNAMDIWell, Ken, before Roger responds, you should know we got an email from Sujeep, who says that in his view, London, in general, is an excellent combination of old and new architecture. But here's Roger Lewis.

LEWISOh, the eye of the beholder, again. Well, I can't quibble about Paris. I mean, I…

NNAMDIAnd --well, you could. It's whether you would.

LEWISIt's one of my favorite cities. I've been there many, many times since 1964. You know, Paris -- I think what, of course, charms people about Paris is the fact that it's a walkable city. We haven't talked about the importance -- we've talked about the promenade and movement and sequence and so forth. But Paris is a walkable city. It's not a city of skyscrapers. There are some -- there are a couple of enclaves where you can find skyscrapers.

LEWISThey seem a little bit out of sync with the city, but I think that's probably what Ken's thinking about, is the scale of the city and the texture, if you will, of the…

PRICEAnd yet the Eiffel Tower, as height, is a perfect moment.

LEWISWell, I was going to add one other thing. In Washington, there are two great contrasts where height is an issue. Look at the Vietnam Memorial, which is -- and the Washington Monument. The two of these juxtapose. You know, they have dimension, but not necessarily, you know, one is about height, one is about lateral extension. And, you know, I think that's a question we can have another show about, is proportion and dimension.

NNAMDIAnd I'm afraid we're just about out of time. Travis Price is an architect and author of the "The Mythic Modern: Architectural Expeditions into the Spirit of Place." You can see the documentary about the creation of the memorial that Travis Price worked on in Ireland and County Mayo. That film will be airing next Monday. Two screenings on Monday evening of the film, "Tale of the Tongs," at the School of Architecture at Catholic University. It's all a part of the Environmental Film Festival. Travis Price, thank you so much for joining us.

PRICEThank you, Kojo.

NNAMDIRoger Lewis is an architect. He writes the "Shaping the City" column for the Washington Post. He's professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Maryland, College Park. Roger, good to see you.

LEWISA great pleasure. Thank you.

NNAMDIThank you all for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.