BusinessReport.com

Never let it be said that people who bend pipe for a living can’t have imagination.

Turner Industries, founded in 1961, might have settled for a pretty, conventional box for its new administration building adjacent to its Port Allen fabrication plant. Instead, it struck a blow for architectural innovation: an undulating, metal-clad marvel that weds corporate identity, efficiency and art into a low-slung, conduit-shaped structure destined to turn heads once it’s completed sometime next year.

Trey Trahan, president and principal-in-charge of Trahan Architects, which designed the building, is giddy.

“They’ve been a phenomenal client,” he says. “This is the type of client an architect dreams about.”

Trahan says Thomas Turner, the vice chairman and son of founder Bert Turner, came to him about a year ago looking for a building design that would lend a “fresh look” to Turner Industries while speaking to the company’s identity, mission and people. Initial talks involved something much less ambitious than what eventually emerged.

Trahan’s team hung around the Port Allen plant, where Turner uses heat induction to bend pipe into every imaginable configuration for petrochemical and other industrial customers. Pipe formed this way is stronger than pipe using T’s or elbows. Trahan, for his part, latched onto the notion of flow.

“We said, ‘This is intriguing. Maybe we should investigate the idea of fluidity. And study your program and see how you all flow as a business, and what that means to process.’”

That eventually led to a design that from above not only resembles a piece of Turner work but actually incorporates the real item into the structure itself—pipe formed by Turner employees at the plant next door and on display as part of the interior architecture.

“We realized we could use this idea of fluidity and that technology to create a form that wasn’t a square box, so we could begin to think more sculpturally—where architecture’s moving,” Trahan says. “But in a very economic way. All that intrigued us.”

Only in the last 10 or 15 years has digital technology has made it possible to design more “curve-linear,” less boxy designs without spending a tremendous amount of money, Trahan says.

Thomas Turner estimates that the new building—single-story, around 20,000 square feet and more than 300 feet long—will take about $180 per square foot to build. He says the Trahan design meets all the criteria the company had in mind: It serves as Turner Industries’ “signature,” showcases the work the company does at the site and will be relatively quick to build.

It also had to be energy efficient, Turner says, which it is. The building will be oriented east-west, one end framing the Mississippi River bridge like a crooked telescope, with a warping roof plane that makes the most of natural light. The lighting system will adjust itself to the amount of ambient light coming in, saving money on energy costs. The roof itself—with swooping eaves that nearly touching the ground at some points—will be sheathed in metal, possibly brushed stainless steel.

Trahan is designing other buildings for Turner, including a personnel center in Baton Rouge. Turner says they’ll have some of the same flavor but won’t be quite as daring as the Port Allen structure, which will be visible from Interstate 10 on the south side.

“When you’re on a single-use site like our pipe facility, I think you can afford to take a dare, because it will be used for that and nothing else,” Turner says.

He adds that Trahan has an innate ability to consider all aspects of a site and “think out of the box” (literally in this case), though he admits he wasn’t expecting what Trahan came up with.

Turner says there was some concern the company’s employees wouldn’t like it. After they got a look at it, though, and understood the efficiency and “functionality” of the design, they wouldn’t entertain any other, he says. Those employees are currently housed in temporary buildings, some of them 30 years old. Turner says they deserve better.

“It’s kind of like moving from a tent to a real building,” he says. “It’s going to be something.”

Mark Hash, a lead designer on the project, concedes it took some time to get the client to “believe in the design,” which he calls “active and lively.” Heat induction bending has been used in architectural elements before, though probably never played such an integral role in a building before, he says.

“I don’t think it’s ever driven the overall form of the building compositionally or formally,” Hash says. “It’s usually been more kind of ornamentation.”

The design is still being fine-tuned, and construction should start by the end of the year. Trahan, meanwhile, admits the process has been a challenge, since “every detail is new and fresh.” He realizes some people won’t get it.

“That’s OK,” Trahan says. “We know this: Some will love it, some will criticize it. Anything that is different is going to generate that type of dialogue, and I think that’s a positive thing.”

All the same, it’s a pivotal project for Trahan Architects, which Trahan founded in 1992. He hopes other clients see it and realize every business has a story that a good architect can extract “to create something that is meaningful.”

Beyond that, he hopes it helps nudge Baton Rouge and Louisiana into being braver architecturally and artistically. The Turner building will be a step in that direction, as is the Shaw Center for the Arts downtown.

“We typically are thought of as people who reproduce what other cities have done years ahead of us,” Trahan says. “We should look to find out who we are as a city and a culture, and allow that kind of history to inform our future.”