2021 Year in Review: Victor Body-Lawson, AIA, Body Lawson Associates Architects and Planners

Name: Victor Body-Lawson, AIA

Job Title: Founder and Principal

Company Name: Body Lawson Associates Architects and Planners

How has your working environment changed over the last year?
Design and real estate work are no longer simply venue- or space-based. The process has become increasingly virtual, and we collaborate using sophisticated tools and more organized, online communications approaches. As a result, we’ve consolidated our own architecture offices and studio, and we’ve adapted in new ways that help ensure success with clients, developers and contractors. We’re meeting virtually with fewer on-site visits, which means contractors have to document their work much better than ever before, sharing with us construction progress through photographs, videos and reporting tools. As a result, business communication and even internal communications have become much better.

What was your greatest professional accomplishment or most notable project, deal, or transaction in 2021?
Working with WXY architecture + urban design, we’ve designed and completed the first phase, two buildings, of a dramatic reimagining of a former juvenile detention center in the Bronx. It is becoming a mixed-use affordable housing development—named La Peninsula—and will eventually bring 740 units of much-needed housing, parklike open area, light industrial space, a film production studio, community facilities, and ground-floor arts and retail. Behind it is the New York City Economic Development Corp. (NYCEDC), as well as HPD and the Housing Development Corp. and the developers the Hudson Companies, Gilbane Development Co., and MHANY.