Baltimore City Paper

In 2013, architect Travis Price and his Spirit of Place-Spirit of Design students from The Catholic University of America designed and constructed an architectural installation on the island of Inishturk off Ireland’s rugged west coast. The Spirit of Place design/build studio explores the connection between culture, landscape and the unique history of people and place through a contemporary design idiom. Over nine days, the students built a memorial on this remote, windswept and sparsely populated island, and the film interweaves the construction with profiles of the people who live on Inishturk. Tale of the Tongs presents an inspiring insight into the students’ design and construction process, and what it means to this small village. Tale of the Tongs and other Spirit of Place projects have received numerous AIA/DC Design Awards, and widespread press in Architectural Record, Dwell, Metropolis and more. To view the trailer: http://vimeo.com/102775287 The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with the filmmakers: Emmy Award- winning Judith Dwan Hallet and Stanley Hallet, FAIA, former Dean of Catholic University School of Architecture. They will be joined by Kathleen Lane, AIABaltimore Executive Director (former Spirit of Place Director). The panel will be moderated by Baltimore-based design journalist Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson. This event is FREE to attend. Bios: Judith Dwan Hallet Judy is an award winning documentary filmmaker who has been making films for over 45 years. After graduating from college in 1964, Judy joined the Peace Corps in Tunisia teaching English as a Second Language. She met her future husband, Stanley Hallet, a Peace Corps Volunteer in architecture, and they collaborated on a film on the Berber Villages of Southern Tunisia. After directing several more independent films with her now husband, including two documentaries in Afghanistan, Judy became a Producer/Reporter at the NBC affiliate station in Salt Lake City, Utah. Over the next 14 years, she produced over 100 news documentaries. Moving to Washington in 1986, National Geographic Television hired her as the Senior Producer for their weekly television series, EXPLORER where she oversaw over 60 documentaries and also produced four of her own films. After nearly five years at EXPLORER, Judy formed her own company, JUDITH DWAN HALLET PRODUCTIONS, where she produced and directed fourteen award winning television documentaries. In 1995, Women in Film and Video awarded her their Woman of Vision Creative Excellence Award. In 2001 she received The Mayor’s Arts Award for Excellence in an Artistic Discipline by the Washington DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. In 2008 she received an Emmy from The National Capital Chesapeake Bay Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in recognition for her significant contributions to the broadcast industry. Just recently in 2015, she received recognition from the Washington DC Office of Motion Picture & Television Development as the March Filmmaker of the Month in honor of Women’s History Month for her lifetime contribution to the local film industry. In 2014, Judy and her husband Stanley produced an hour documentary, “Tale of the Tongs”, on architectural students building a memorial on the island of Inishturk off the Western Coast of Ireland. It was the first time in over forty years that they have made a film together. Judy says it’s the beginning of a new collaboration. At the moment, Judy is completing a book on her life as a woman documentary filmmaker. A memoir focusing on her experiences out in the field in Africa, South America, Indonesia, Europe and Afghanistan. Over her career, Judy has produced films in seventeen countries around the world on subjects as diverse as an obscure tribe living in tree houses in the rainforest of Irian Jaya, Indonesia, to Gauchos in Argentina, to biographies on Jane Goodall and Pope John Paul II. Stanley Ira Hallet, FAIA Former Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at The Catholic University of America (CUA) in Washington, DC, Stanley Ira Hallet, FAIA, is a Professor Emeritus of Architecture at CUA where he teaches undergraduate and graduate studios and seminars exploring the historic and contemporary relationships between culture, urban design, landscape and architecture. Given his early experiences in Tunisia as a Peace Corps Volunteer (1964-66) and in Afghanistan as a Fulbright-Hayes Lecturer at the University of Kabul (1972), his studio work and lectures often explore issues of landscape, urban fabric and sacred space. Formerly Studio Head in Rome, Italy he currently acts as Graduate Studio Head, CUA School of Architecture and Planning in Paris, France. He also has offered seminars and studios addressing the relationship of cinema and architecture in Schools of Architecture in the United States, Puerto Rico, France and Italy and has produced several documentary films with his wife, Judith Dwan Hallet, an internationally recognized documentary filmmaker. Their latest collaboration, The Tale of the Tongs (2014) premiered in The Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital. He is presently writing Architecture and the Moving Image and has published his own writings as well as studio work exploring the same subject previously exhibited at the Palazzo d’Aumale in Terrasini, Sicily (2004). He has lectured widely in both the United States and Europe and his observations have appeared in major international and national journals of architecture such as 2A(Qatar), Architectural Record, Architecture Plus, Faith and Form, The Journal of Architectural Education, Ekistics, Mimar, The Afghan Journal (Austria), The Architect’s Journal (London), Ottagono (Italy) and IBLA, the Revue de l’institute des belles lettres arabe-CNRS. His book, The Traditional Architecture of Afghanistan was co-authored with Rafi Samizay and published by Garland Press, Évolution d’un habitat : le monde berbère du Sud tunisien (French) and The Mosques of Djerba were both published by Blurb Press containing materials and are presently on exhibit in Tunis, Tunisia. A Forest Garden on Somes Pond and Sketches from Mount Desert Island were published by the Somes Pond Center with Sketches now on exhibit at the Artemis Gallery in Northeast Harbor, Maine. Recognized as a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects for his contributions to both architecture and architectural education, his work has been distinguished with 12 AIA design awards. He received a 25-year design award given by the Utah Chapter of the American Institute of Architects for the Quad Project. More recently, his own house, a 1998 recipient of a Washingtonian/DC AIA Chapter design award, was published in the Italian Journal Il Projetto and the American Journal Residential Architect. A finalist in the international competition for the DC Metro Canopy Competition, his proposal was reviewed in Cityscape by architectural critic, Benjamin Forgey of the Washington Post. Graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Architecture in 1964 and a Master of Architecture in 1967, he taught for over fifteen years at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah and 25 years at The Catholic University of America. He has participated on numerous architectural juries in the academy as well as in the profession, both in the United States, Italy, France and Israel and is currently assisting the Université Tunis Carthage in redefining their design studio content and pedagogy. Travis Price, FAIA Travis is a celebrated architect, environmental pioneer, author, educator, and philosopher has developed over the past four decades, a modern architecture that works hand in hand with ecology and mythology restoring the spirit of place to modern design. His vision is grounded in real-life success with large-scale AIA award-winning private and public works, including the world’s largest solar building for the Tennessee Valley Authority. He has planned new towns and designed an array of unique individual residences, commercial properties, and institutional monuments. He coined the term “passive solar” with his early green architectural works in New Mexico. He installed the first wind machine in Manhattan which initiated the Public Utilities Regulation Policy Act allowing co-generation of wind and solar energy with public utilities. Since 1975, he has a litany of Design Awards within the US and abroad. In concert with The Catholic University of America as adjunct professor, Travis Price founded and directs the non-profit Spirit of Place – Spirit of Design. Travis is featured in numerous films, radio, and TV programs, and international publications. Travis Price’s education, like his work, spans philosophy and architecture. He holds both a B.A. in Western Philosophy from St. John’s College and a combined Masters of Architecture from Georgia Institute of Technology and The University of New Mexico. Travis Price is a registered architect with NCARB practicing and lecturing throughout the United States and abroad. He has been awarded the covetous Fellow of the American Institute of Architecture Title for his unique contributions to the field of Architecture. Travis is a contributing Editor to National Geographic Traveler Magazine. Travis lectures to audiences at the Smithsonian Institution, Apple Headquarters, AIA, and the National Geographic Society among others. His lectures inspire architectural societies, universities, and conferences. Travis is well known for his internationally published works in numerous books and journals on design and architecture. Travis appeared on HGTV at his home declared as one of the Greenest Homes of the World and more recently in a documentary, “The Tale of the Tongs”, filmed in County Mayo Ireland. Moderator: Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson Elizabeth has been writing about architecture, design, and cities for over a decade. Her articles have appeared in both The New York Times and the Times magazine, Slate, Architect, Metropolis, Design Observer, Architectural Lighting, Residential Architect, and the Atlantic magazine’s CityLab site, among others. From 2004-2007, Elizabeth was the editor of Urbanite magazine in Baltimore. Today she is a contributing editor with Architect. She has also served as an editor for publications such as Next City, Metropolis, and Fast Company’s CoDesign site. In 2011, Elizabeth received the Roger D. Redden Award for individual achievement in the field of architectural writing from the Baltimore Architecture Foundation.