“Architecture is beyond buildings. It’s about arriving at a place where you believe that architecture can create an attitude of kindness.”
Victor F. “Trey” Trahan, III, FAIA, is the founder and CEO of Trahan Architects, established in 1992 with a belief that bringing humility and awareness into the design process helps create authentic spaces that elevate our lives.
In both his personal and professional life, Trey is continually exploring ways to cultivate generosity and inclusiveness in our relationships with each other and with our environments. He is deeply committed to social and ecological responsibility, and his admiration for the aesthetically sublime has inspired a lifelong passion for art and nature. His approach to architecture begins with his conviction that a building can create something that goes beyond its walls—that when we build, we are shaping our landscapes, communities, and cultures. As such, he sees humanitarianism as central to his practice, and strives to consider his designs through a lens of conscience, compassion, and curative action, reaching beyond the traditional bounds of architecture to manifest the peace and justice that can lead us to a sense of interconnectivity. It is his profoundly held belief that by working with attunement and leaving space for forces outside of ourselves, we can give rise to beauty, longevity, and ultimately, kindness.
Since 1992, Trey has led Trahan Architects to expand from its New Orleans roots to open a second office in New York City, and rise to be ranked the number one design firm by Architect Magazine, the official publication of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). Trey received the Architecture Review Emerging Architecture Award in London in 2005, and in 2006 he was elected to the AIA College of Fellows. Trey was named the 2021 Laureate for The American Prize for Architecture by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies. He was a visiting critic and distinguished lecturer at the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Southern California, the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, and in 2021 he served as the Catholic University of American Walton Critic. From 2015-2017, Trey served as a member of the International Council of the Van Allen Institute in New York, an organization that explores how design can transform cities and landscapes to improve people’s lives, and he is currently a board member of The Cultural Landscape Foundation in Washington D.C., a nonprofit that educates and engages the public in our shared historical landscapes.
Trey has established several innovative conservation projects, including Fundo Tic Toc in Patagonia, Chile and which is part of a protected property acquired by Trey from the late Doug Tompkins, founder of North Face as well as former plantation site in St. Francisville, LA. An avid art collector, Trey lends his collections to museum exhibitions around the world. His meticulous curation includes an extensive series of Chawan tea bowls crafted by revered Japanese artist Shiro Tsujimura as well as a collection by the noted artist Genta Ishizuka. He divides his time between New Orleans and St. Francisville in Louisiana, New York City, and Patagonia, Chile.
