Architect Tre Trahan talks about building sacred spaces for design communication and city podcast
In this episode of Design and the City – a podcast by reSITE on how to make cities more livable – Trey Trahan, founder of Trahan Architects, discusses the importance of designing spaces that enhance human connection and encourage self-reflection. With ecology and the poetics of space as core values, Trahan Architects’ work focuses on creating impactful cultural spaces and in this podcast, Trahan advocates for design centered around the elevation of the human experience.
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ReSITE – the global non-profit that improves the urban environment – launched the second installment of its Design and City podcast earlier this year, with past guests including Winy Mass, Thomas Heatherwick and Gary Hustwit. Covering a wide range of interdisciplinary topics, talks on the podcast ranged from issues such as surveillance and security to child-friendly urban planning to how to tackle gentrification in developing cities.
In a conversation with Alexandra Seibenthal, Trahan discusses how growing up in rural Louisiana informed his interest in the environment, particularly soils, and the search for a “meaningful dialogue” between architecture and landscape. The architect uses the example of the Mississippi River and the indigenous architecture of Louisiana to emphasize the importance of soil as a building material and an essential factor for the health and economy of the region. Building on a parallel system to the forest ecosystem, the architect develops the design idea for a range of different ages, thus creating greater opportunities for urban environments to evolve in response to unforeseen conditions.
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Trahan then talks about architecture that encourages human participation, nurtures thinking and memory or reconnects users with the natural world. The talk touches on topics such as the architecture of religious spaces, the profession’s departure from the stellar architecture system, architects relinquishing excessive control over their designs, and the value of unpredictability and “healing architecture”.
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