Christopher K. Travis - Biography

Christopher K. Travis wears many hats.

He is the Managing Partner of Sentient Architecture, LLC, a full service architecture firm with offices in Austin and South Central Texas.

He is the CEO of Nidiant Corporation, an Internet start-up that has recently launched the Truehome.net website. Truehome and Travis' unique approach to "emotional architecture" were the subject of a major article in the New York Times Home section, Go Magazine, and other national and internation media in 2008.

As a builder and designer, Mr. Travis has served as a consultant and lead designer for residential and commercial projects in Texas since 1975 ranging to over $2,000,000 in scope. The company - now owned by his oldest son - builds historic commercial projects; new homes in historic styles; and moves and restores antique buildings, log cabins and other historic properties.

Mr. Travis remains involved with the design/built projects of that firm. Round Top Companies, Inc., dba Texas Country Home and Shiloh Travis Homes is one of the premier high-end residential design-build firms in Texas.

Travis is an expert in historic design and the restoration of indigenous Texas historic structures. 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.

His projects have appeared in the New York Times, Builder magazine, Country Living, Cowboys and Indians, Home Companion, Sun Coast Magazine, Go 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.

Christopher K. Travis is also a theorist with a concentrated multi-disciplinary interest in how human factors testing can be applied to architecture and design in order to more effectively create homes and environments that "fit people." He also studies the possibility of creating therapeutic architecture. It is this long term study that inspired Truehome.net.

In this regard, he has lectured at the Texas A & M School of Architecture and presented at the 2008 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association. His blog - Architecture of Life - is an ongoing discussion of the ideas and experiences that led to the creation of Truehome.net and the alternative architectural approach it proposes.

Mr. Travis is a poet and the author of Deadspace Poetry, a book of verse and images. He is also a master carpenter, furniture maker, song-writer and guitarist, wilderness canoeist, children’s advocate, humorist and public speaker.

He was the editor, publisher and writer of the regional quarterly, the Round Top Register from 1995 until June of 2008. The Register was called the "Prairie Home Companion of the Lone Star State" by the Arts at Large columnist of the New York Times."

His quirky tabloid was the third "newspaper" on the Internet in Texas, well ahead of the metropolitan dailies. It was the subject of an article in Editor and Publisher Magazine, and its website was named one of the Top Ten Media Websites in Texas by Texas Monthly.

Mr. Travis was interviewed by the BBC and other regional and national media. His fictional characters and faux "investigative reporting" fooled the Daily Show and teased Texas newspapers and TV stations. His antics and early adoption of the Internet in a small rural community led to a significant on-screen role in the PBS documentary, Digital Nation.

Though always a one-man sideline project for Chris Travis and his "Queen" (who clearly dominated all aspects of the Register's universe) the Register was and is the highest circulation per issue editorial publication in the South Central Texas region it serves. Each issue, he began his editorial content with verses. His book of poetry and images, Deadspace Poetry, was compiled from the poems he published in each issue between 1995 an 2001.
In June of 2008, friend and columnist Kurt Wilson, became the Editor of the Round Top Register. Mr. Travis remains the publisher of the quarterly and one of its writers.

In the Summer of 2006 - th0ugh continuing his design practice - Chris became primarily occupied as the CEO of Nidiant Corporation, the parent company of a new technology startup called Truehome.net. The Truehome process has been endorsed by a variety of academic experts and is the subject of the last chapter of the book Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You, by behavioral psychologist, Sam Gosling, Ph.D.

Nidiant Corporation's patent-pending web-based software application can build exercises that identify what consumers consider fitting, emotionally appreciate, and ultimately purchase in any industry that must collect consumer response to inform its market. The platform's development was completed in beta form in the Summer of 2007. It can be also be applied as a sales and marketing platform, or a research tool in behavior/environment studies focused on both individuals and communities. In the future, the software may be adapted as a clinical tool for therapeutic or psychological purposes.

Truehome.net represents the first web-based application of this approach to design that has been used over a decade in his architecture firm. The exercises and organizational tools developed by the company combine psychology, architecture and lifestyle analysis to enable users to identify, organize, prioritize, and communicate every detail of their perfect living space. The company's goal intends to market its products to consumers, real estate agents, architects, interior designers and therapists in 2009.

Mr. Travis is also a children’s activist and was co-founder, with a youth leader, of the Tour de YEH (Youth Ending Hunger). The Tour was a transcontinental bicycle ride began on the White House lawn in 1990 and was that designed to promote the end of hunger and homelessness. It was co-sponsored by World Runners and the Hunger Project.

In that event, sixty-six teens from the U.S., Canada, India, Belize, Japan, Malaysia, Australia, Britain, Kenya, and team from the Soviet Union - before the Berlin Wall came down - rode across the nation and into the opening ceremonies of the Goodwill Games. The Tour had a media reach of several hundred million people and was covered by Pravda, USA Today and network television in several countries.

Mr. Travis and his wife are also the founders of the Round Top Family Library, a full service public library that also serves the community of Round Top and the surrounding region as an academic enrichment resource. He is also the c0-author of the Round Top Land Use and Architectural Controls Ordinance. Round Top, with a population of 77, is the smallest community in the State of Texas with a public library and an architectural controls ordinance.

More information about the town may be found at the website of its Chamber of Commerce.

Mr. Travis is the father of three children, has five grandchildren, and lives with his wife, two dogs and one cat near the small towns of Round Top, Texas and Cloudcroft, New Mexico.