One NYC Design Firm is on a Mission to Build Smarter Churches

As principal at Body Lawson Associates (BLA) in New York, New York, Victor Body-Lawson has always endeavored to balance his work between practicing and teaching. After graduating from the School of Architecture at Columbia University in 1984, he taught at City College and then Yale Graduate School of Architecture, and is currently back at Columbia, teaching at the university’s Graduate School of Architecture. “I’ve always been in academia, and I’ve always had that as part of my practice,” he says. “I look at academia as a place to learn, and as a place to develop new ideas while constantly teaching at the same time.”

“We’re doing quite a few ... projects now where there’s a church on the ground and apartments on top. That’s something that we’ve found has been a benefit not only to the church, but also to the community.” Victor Body-Lawson, Principal, Body Lawson Associates, Licensed Architect; Faculty, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation

Based in Harlem, BLA’s work puts community at the core. The firm has been involved in a number of affordable housing projects, with the goal of creating mixed-use designs that not only include residences, but also components such as grocery stores, daycare facilities, schools, and even film production studios and dance space. “We are very big on affordable housing just because we feel that if done right, it empowers the people who live there,” he says.

With COVID-19 forcing worshippers out of the sanctuary and into their homes, churches the world over have been struggling with how to serve their congregants and their communities.

This community-centered focus is also at the heart of BLA’s church designs, Body-Lawson explains. “In order for the church to move up to the next level, they are finding that it’s best to team up with a development team that will build over the air rights of the church, and then have the church at the base of the building so that it now becomes a much more viable project for its time,” he says. “We’re doing quite a few of those projects now where there’s a church on the ground and apartments on top. That’s something that we’ve found has been a benefit not only to the church, but also to the community.”

With COVID-19 forcing worshippers out of the sanctuary and into their homes, churches the world over have been struggling with how to serve their congregants and their communities. A firm believer that technology plays a key role in achieving this, Body-Lawson has been working with churches to design spaces that can reach audiences beyond the worship center. Recently, Church.Design sat down with him to gain his perspective.

Church.Design: You’re now designing video production facilities into churches. Tell us about some of the projects that you’ve been working on.

VBL: The pandemic has created a crossroads for us in terms of design of public spaces and design in general, and in this particular case, design of churches, where some churches that have embraced technology and have embraced videoconferencing are actually growing, whereas those that don't seem to embrace this technology are atrophying or literally dying. [It is] what caused us to start to think about how we can create systems in the church that are not necessarily based on live spaces or large meeting spaces.

We’re currently working on a project at Holy Trinity Baptist Church [in Brooklyn, N.Y.]. They're going to demolish the church and they're going to build a new church, and they'll build an apartment building over the church. In the process we designed the church, and typically the programming in these churches are main sanctuary, fellowship hall where they meet, and then a few classrooms. What we've been able to convince the church to do is to put in one of those spaces a video recording studio so that they could essentially have an entire service from that room. The pastor can preach; he can have his music ministry come play, and broadcast it. Now it becomes much more virtual. Now he could create a global audience from that center, as opposed to focusing it on the sanctuary itself. The sanctuary is going to be connected to that room so that they can broadcast services––there’s going to be filming in the main sanctuary and, at the same time, they can film in the studio.

We’re also working on another church [Lagree Baptist Church in the Bronx, N.Y.], where we’re adapting an AV room which is not next to the sanctuary that will be able to broadcast whatever happens in the sanctuary. And what we’re trying to do with a lot of these congregations is to make these systems as easy as possible––make them plug-and-play.

Church.Design: Have you always considered technology in your designs? Or has this emphasis on video broadcast pushed you to think more about technology?

VBL: Our work is all technology-based. You can't do design now without incorporating technology. It's like designing a plane, or designing a ship, or designing a rocket ship without incorporating technology––it's impossible. Every building that we build is always a step higher than the building that was done before. They are smarter buildings from the heating and cooling systems, the plumbing, the electrical. We’re just building smarter buildings. And not only is it required by the city to build buildings that occupy a small carbon footprint, it's on us an architects to constantly push the envelope as far as technology is concerned.

Again, I also teach. And one of the things that we have done is that we've gone online, our classes being completely digital. We have students in China, in Korea, in other parts of the United States, and we're having to communicate. It’s a totally different way of looking at architecture, because architecture is very tactile––everything is touch. Even when you teach, you always want to draw and show it to your students, and we're using models, and physical things. But now we're learning that you can actually have a larger global reach, but you also have to learn how to do what you did––in a physical sense––digitally. So yeah, we've had to embrace technology in everything.

Church.Design: When working with churches, what challenges do you run up against in encouraging them to let you incorporate technology into your designs? Are there any obstacles that you often run up against?

VBL: No church is alike, so I can’t really generalize. I find some churches are technology-averse. [Or they are] not necessarily technology-averse, but it could be because it’s not their priority. It’s one thing to talk to someone and say, “Look, this is what this kind of technology could do,” but if they’re trying to find more members and trying to attract more people, and they’re at a different stage, then there’s nothing you really can do. You just have to wait until they’re ready to use that technology.

But then there are others that are very gung-ho: “Let’s create a global reach. Let’s get members in Ghana, in Korea. Let’s get people in China, let’s get people in Europe.” They’ve embraced it, and they are the ones that seem to be growing in this environment.

The other thing, too, that I’ve learned––even though I say I don’t like to generalize––is that if a church has been around for a long time, they tend to be reluctant to change. When we introduce change, it has to be done surgically. It has to be done in a way that integrates with their history and their culture and their past. And unfortunately, in the United States, there’s a pressure on churches [because] people aren’t attending as much as they used to because the emphasis is not on religion anymore.

Although I think the pandemic has helped. People are now going back to looking at a spiritual relationship with the universe or their Maker, so there’s a resurgence. But how one embraces that with a younger generation––you have to figure out a way that you can get to them, whether it’s on their smartphones, or their laptops, or their computers, as opposed to physically going to church. A lot of people who are going to church on their smartphones now, or on their iPads, are also sending in tithes. And they feel better because environmentally they don’t have to get on a train, or use a car. There’s that dichotomy of: how do I relate to God and at the same time feel good about it? And if a church can provide that to me in my house while I’m locked down, then that church is the one that really gets the benefit of growing.

Church.Design: What lessons have you learned about church design today that you would impart on your peers around the world?

VBL: I would say what we do is look at what people want. I think people want transparency. And what I mean by transparency: they want to understand what is going on behind walls. If you look at older churches, they’ve tended to be monolithic blocks of stone and you have to get past the door first before you see what’s going on in the church––you have to be a member of the church to really attain what that church is giving to you.

Our approach is always to create a level of transparency, but at the same time the church can still provide a level of privacy in terms of its liturgy, or whatever it’s doing. We try to make our churches as open as possible. We have glass so that the façades are as open as possible so people can get in there, feel as if they’re part of the church.

We’re also looking at suggesting that the church is connected to the neighborhood, it’s connected to the environment so that it’s not only there for religious purposes, but it’s also there for mixed use. It incorporates things like a restaurant or a café. It has internet services. It has gaming. It’s a place that is fun for youth––not only for teenagers, but even for younger children so that you start to create a mixed-use environment that reflects the community. Instead of saying, “OK, this is all we do. We only do liturgy,” open the doors so that the church now becomes a community center. Our approach is to try to design churches to be centers where people in the community can get together and feel as if it’s their home. It’s a place where they’re not only getting nurtured with their spiritual selves, but they’re also connecting with their neighbors. They’re getting to learn and they’re being empowered by learning new things.

And, as a result, that’s where we start to incorporate technology so that the church is not only a community-based church, but it can reach out to the rest of the world.