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Christopher Travis

Christopher K. Travis is the founder and lead designer for Truehome Design.Build. He designed and built a broad variety of residential and historic projects in Texas from 1995 to 2014, including high-end new homes, ranches and estates, major remodeling, historic restoration and adaptive re-use of historic structures, historic and light commercial projects.


From 1995 until 2013, Travis was the founder, lead designer and Managing Partner of Sentient Architecture, LLC, (Formerly Round Top Architecture). He partnered with commercial architect, Robert Brett Pitt, in that enterprise serving the rural areas of South Central Texas and the Austin, Texas environs. In 2013, the partners formed individual enterprises and Travis moved his design practice into Truehome Design.Build.


Travis is an expert on the adaptive re-use of period materials and artifacts, as well as human factors based architectural programming for residential projects. He is the author of the Truehome Workshop and the originator of that systematic process which he has used with clients for over eighteen years.

One of his projects was awarded a T. C. Jester award for excellence in historic design in the historic Houston Heights. Mr. Travis’ company was named Remodeler of the Year by the Greater Houston Builder’s Association. He is also an expert on designing and building projects on remote sites and in rural areas.


His projects have appeared in the New York TimesBuilder magazine, Country LivingCowboys and IndiansHome CompanionSun Coast MagazineGo Magazine (Airtran Airways flight magazine), Hommes Magazine in Greece; the San Antonio Express News, the Marin County Independent Journal, The Providence Sunday Journal, in Texas Highways and before employee groups at Microsoft and Google. Major stories on his approach have appeared twice in German publications and in the Netherlands and Australia.


Mr. Travis is also a writer and theorist who has a multi-disciplinary interest in how psychological techniques, and human factors findings, can be applied to architecture and residential design to more effectively create homes and living environments that “fit the psychological nature of people” .He studies and applies the possibility of therapeutic architecture in his design practice. It is this long term study that inspired both the last twenty years of his design practice and the Truehome Workshop. He believes the psychological and emotional needs of the inhabitants of a home should guide the work of designers, and has used his systematic method for that purpose with his clients since 1998, and exclusively since 2002.

More Episodes

Tuesday, May 2, 2023

Ray Calabro

Ray Calabro’s work emphasizes the relationship of a building to its surrounding landscape; he believes that architecture is a thoughtful response to the culture and spirit of each place. His buildings embody the common principles of site-responsive architecture, robust forms and innovative use of material. Yet each responds differently to the special nature of client, program and place, qualities that elevate buildings to the realm of sensitive and lastingarchitecture.Educated at Virginia Tech (B. Arch 1994), Ray began his career there as a Lecturer in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies. Since joining Bohlin Cywinski Jackson in 1995, Ray’s project experience spans academic, cultural commercial and residential projects in the continental US and Canada. In 2009, he was named a Principal/Owner in the firm.As Principal of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson’s Seattle studio, Ray leads a collaborative design process on a diverse range of projects. Some of the projects discussed in this podcast include the award-winning Grand Teton Discovery and Visitor Center in Jackson, Wyoming, the Nu Skin Innovation Center and corporate headquarters in Provo, Utah, Everlane’s Abbot Kinney retail store in Venice, California and extraordinary private residences in Jackson, Wyoming; Canmore, Alberta; West Kootenay, British Columbia, and the San Juan Islands in Washington state. His work has been recognized with numerous national and international awards for design, and has been published in Dwell, Architectural Record, ArchDaily, The PLAN and Architectural Digest. He is a curatorial leader within BCJ and has been instrumental in the creation of its celebrated monographs, including its most recent publication Gathering.In 2014, he was elevated to the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows.