About

Victor F. “Trey” Trahan III, FAIA, is the Founder and President of Fondation Trahan and Founder and CEO of Trahan Architects. Internationally recognized for work that pairs technological innovation with quiet, material beauty, he has long taken a rooted approach to architecture, beginning every project by studying the soil, ecology, history, and culture of place. Over time, this practice led him to a simple conviction: if our buildings are to be truly humane, we must care for the lands, stories, and objects that surround them with the same rigor and humility that we bring to design. Fondation Trahan emerges directly from this belief.

A devoted collector, particularly of Japanese ceramics, metalwork, lacquer, and humble textiles, Trey is drawn to objects shaped by the hand, by chance, and by time – tea bowls and bronze vessels whose patina records centuries of touch, whose apparent simplicity conceals great depth. Fondation Trahan was created, in part, to honor and share these objects responsibly: lending them to museums, supporting research, and presenting them in contexts where their quiet presence can invite reflection on the cultures, beliefs, and ecologies from which they emerge.

Equally central is Trey’s commitment to land, history, and ecological repair. As steward of conservation properties in St. Francisville, Louisiana, and southern Chile, he convenes ecologists, historians, Indigenous knowledge holders, descendants, and other experts to study how human occupation and ecologies are intertwined and how damaged landscapes can begin to heal. At Live Oak, a former plantation, this has meant engaging directly with the legacies of enslavement while restoring native prairies, woodlands, and waterways. Through Fondation Trahan, Trey seeks to ensure that such places and the artworks in his care become living laboratories for reconciliation: spaces where soil, art, and story come together to help people imagine more compassionate, ecologically attuned futures and to accept their shared responsibility to the lands they inhabit.