A pre-engineered steel Vietnamese Buddhist temple in Lawrenceville, GA

The challenge

This was a higher-complexity project. A temple has an architectural language of its own, the pavilions, the covered walkways down the sides, the overhangs that give the building its character, and all of it had to be realised in a pre-engineered metal building rather than worked against it. The challenge was engineering those features into the PEMB design so the finished temple looked and worked the way it was meant to, not like a standard steel shell with detail added on.

The solution

Universal Steel collaborated with TA Design Group of Norcross, Georgia, and architect Mike Thomas, engineering the building to meet the design criteria. The pavilions, walkways and overhangs were worked into the pre-engineered metal building design itself, engineered in-house to Georgia’s code and load requirements and fabricated and shipped from the closest plant. Designing those architectural features into a PEMB, rather than treating them as add-ons, is what brought the temple design to fruition.

The result

The result is a pre-engineered metal building that reads as a temple, with the pavilions, covered walkways and overhangs that define it, delivering the architectural vision for The Buddhist Mindfulness Center of Georgia in steel.