Body-Lawson Associates designs affordable, future-proof architecture

Harlem, NY Architect, artist and developer Victor Body-Lawson, FAIA, a valuable source on affordable housing, enlivening urban mixed-use campuses, and empowering diverse residents and communities, recognizable for his design signature and color palette of warm, dark greys and black hues, is expanding his firm. 

Harlem-based Body Lawson Associates Architects & Planners, also known as BLA, has designed large-scale new affordable housing developments in the neighborhood and the Bronx, new learning environments for Baruch College and Columbia University, and mixed-use developments for various religious congregations in urban and suburban settings. In most recent news, Body-Lawson has been shortlisted as part of a joint venture set to design new K-12 schools in New York City, with longtime partner firm WXY. The two have presented the third phase of their award-winning mixed-use campus La Peninsula in the Bronx to the city’s Public Design Commission as well. 

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has called Body-Lawson an “enthusiastic advocate for collaborative design, arts integration, architectural education and equitable urban solutions,” and he remains committed to the use of art in public works and he is “more conscious about community and individual empowerment than ever before,” he said.

Major new BLA-designed works underway currently include: 

Taryn Towers, an 11-story development on Concord Ave. in the Bronx bringing a 100% affordable community with 142 apartments, led by Black-owned Carthage Advisors. 

“Our work in elevating affordable housing and other building typologies stems greatly from our mission to create pride in communities, to empowering client and tenant groups, as well as all end-users and students, too,” says Victor Body-Lawson, whose 100% minority-owned firm 100% minority-owned firm has also been collaborating architect on projects with Davis Brody Bond and Renzo Piano Building Workshop. “This is essential to our success, helping earn us a reputation for achieving success on difficult inner-city projects.” 

The just-opened second phase of Marcus Garvey Village at 212 West 124^th St. in Harlem, adding scores of affordable apartments and a ground-floor daycare to the planned three-building complex of over 500 residential units. For this Enterprise Green Communities -designed building with a sophisticated smart-facility system, BLA has donated a collection of Body-Lawson’s paintings to be installed on the first floor. 

The 139^th St. Cluster rehabilitates four buildings totaling 58 units with upgraded materials and building mechanical systems, temporarily relocating residents to then welcome them again, this time as homeowners rather than renters. Now close to completing construction, the revitalized cooperative housing is part of a group of buildings that include the former home of famed singer Billie Holiday.  

The Peninsula, a successful, five-acre reimagining of a former juvenile detention property into three phases of new housing and jobs-oriented mixed uses creating 792 affordable apartments. The first phase, totaling 56,000 s/f, introduced new light industrial spaces supporting entrepreneurship, and its signature sawtooth roofline will now cap a city-owned grocery store, in an initiative led by Mayor Mamdani’s administration and the New York City Economic Development Corp.  

The campus, designed by WXY architecture + urban design and Body Lawson Associates, is adding more than 300 affordable units this fall, and its third and final phase is deep in design development.

At 210 West 145^th St., Body Lawson Associates is completing a new “Enterprise Green Communities” project — sustainable housing to make affordable housing work, and keep it affordable over time — for the clients Penta Group and Exact Capital. Adding 74 housing units, new commercial uses, outdoor space and a church to the block between Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Blvd. and Frederick Douglass Blvd., the project is deep in the design phase. 

Known for his work with congregations creating new worship spaces and mixed-use developments, Body-Lawson is creating a multipurpose auditorium for use in church services and community gatherings topped by residential units and senior facilities on a site in Brooklyn. Also in the same borough, Body-Lawson is working with Holy Trinity Baptist Church on a mixed-use market-rate rental building. The collaborating architecture firm GF55 Architects is designing the new building, and BLA is architect for the new church, which includes classrooms, a fellowship hall, private offices, a music and recording studio, as well as storage and support facilities.

A noted leader in responsive, collaborative community solutions and an emerging design signature, Body Lawson Associates Architects and Planners (BLA) is available as a source on new ways to “empower people in under-resourced communities through their buildings, public spaces and community opportunities.”