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About BLA

we turn ideas into works of art.

Body Lawson Associates (BLA) is a firm with architecture, interior design, planning, urban design and historic preservation capabilities. Over the past 25 years, BLA, with a practice largely in the New York City greater metropolitan area, has delivered professional services that create sustainable buildings that blend into their context while elevating the sense of place. Helmed by architect Victor Body-Lawson, AIA, the firm has successfully completed projects for a wide range of clients including corporate, private, institutional, public, and not-for-profit sectors. The project types range from small interior and residential commissions to multi-family housing, public and private academic buildings, facilities for health and recreation, commercial projects, the rehabilitation of historically significant structures, and urban design and planning projects. The firm is especially known for excellence in corporate space planning and interior design.

BLA is a 100% minority-owned firm with a reputation for achieving success on difficult inner-city projects. It has collaborated with numerous firms such as Davis Brody Bond, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, and most recently WXY Studio.

OUR Services

ARCHITECTURE

Over the past 25 years, Body Lawson Associates (BLA) has pursued a central theme of empowering people and communities by advocating for architecture and urban designs that are contextually sensitive, responsive to their constituencies, and derived from close community engagement.

URBAN DESIGN

Body Lawson Associated elevates their commitment to changing the built environment through a dialogue informed by elemental studies of the place, its people and the potential of the architectural solution. It is another dimension of BLA’s pledge to creating an equitable world where growth and advancement are available to everyone through architecture.

INTERIORS

BLA elevates interior design, thinking about the cost, lifespan, functionality and integration of materials. Always looking to creating pride in communities, empowering clients, end-users and their urban context connections.

VICTOR BODY-LAWSON, AIA

Victor Body-Lawson, AIA, is principal of Body Lawson Associates Architects and Planners (BLA), an acclaimed architecture, interiors and urban design practice founded in 1993 and operating in the United States and globally. His international portfolio includes works in multifamily housing, religious and commercial buildings, historic preservation, interior design, and recreational and health facilities. A noted leader in responsive, collaborative community solutions with an emerging design signature, Body-Lawson is recognized for his ability to empower people in under-resourced communities through their public spaces and buildings. He is also an accomplished artist and visiting critic at Yale and Columbia. Current projects include the 740-unit affordable mixed-use campus, The Peninsula, Marcus Garvey Village in Harlem, and the acclaimed, recently completed Home Street Residences in The Bronx. From his groundbreaking Erobograph Apartments to his new and promising works in New York, Baltimore and Kumasi, Ghana, Body-Lawson offers insightful perspectives on equitable urban development.