Projects completed under the guidance of Travis Price, AIA, as this project was accomplished, are designed with a metaphorical lyric in mind.  The lyric for this team project was: The sea of souls churns while dancing around mortal woes, tipping time's ancestral future, here is there, and there again, embracing the unspoken knowing. The success or failure of the project is determined, in the end, solely in regards to how well the final product relates to the original metaphor or lyrical statement. 

This is a design-build team project.  We each began this project by constructing our own lyric and metaphor model. From this point, we worked in increasingly larger groups to construct the final lyric and metaphor model. The purpose of the project was to consolidate the existing ancestral burial grounds of the Thumki village into one memorial or monument to all the ancestors. 

"Located on the highest hill of the Thumki village, the Memorial to the Magar Ancestors is located in an ancient burial ground surrounded by the growing fields of a newly-established sustainable agricultural education center. Alongside the built memorial project, Price taught students of a spring semester graduate design studio at Catholic University to explore and envision new models for rural community spaces for sustainable agriculture and eco-tourism in the village. It is envisioned that the memorial will not only honor the dead, but will be a symbol of regeneration of the deepest aspects of the culture of the villages to inspire new development for housing, tourism, education, and employment within this community, and as a model for other villages in remote Nepal." (from Archdaily.com)

This project won a 2011 AIA Award for Excellence in Architecture.