Victor Body Lawson

Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: Hi, I’m here with Victor Body Lawson. Victor, thank you so much for joining me today.

Victor Body Lawson: Thank you, Stacy. This is really fun.

SSR: Yes.

VBL: I’m so glad to be here with you.

SSR: I’m excited. All right, so we always start at the beginning. Where did you grow up?

VBL: I grew up in Lagos, Nigeria in the 1960s and ’70s and went to high school there. And then came to the United States to do my college work and graduate school. And I grew up and in a family that was in construction. My father was a surveyor and I grew up with T squares and measuring things throughout my life. So it was always a part of our lives at home.

SSR: So it was ingrained from you at an early age?

VBL: Yes. I was either going to take over my father’s practice, not necessarily take over because my brother also worked in the firm.

SSR: Okay.

VBL: But that I was going to be a part of the firm one way or the other

SSR: And a question for you. So what did they build?

VBL: They were surveyors. In fact, it’s funny, my grand uncle was the first black surveyor general for Nigeria before independence. So my father was influenced by him to become a surveyor. This is a short story. And so during when Nigeria got independence, my father’s firm got the contract to measure parts of the country’s borders. So I was always influenced by surveying. So they didn’t really build things, but they measured boundaries and sites and things like that.

SSR: Amazing. Did you want to go to school for architecture? Was that immediately the path you wanted to take or did it take you a little bit to get there?

VBL: No, it took me a while to get there actually, because I grew up in this family that drew, we all drew. My brother drew, my father drew, and I had this… I could draw, I could draw things. So I didn’t like going to the bush really. I didn’t like going to these places where there were no people, there was no development. I just didn’t enjoy that idea of measuring. I felt like I could have an impact in doing other things. So when I decided to choose a profession, which was something that you had to do in my family, I decided to do advertising because I knew I could blend art and selling with advertising.

But then I got bored with it. I really got bored with doing the same thing and then reducing everything that we did into bits and pieces and minutes. And my brother who also suggested that I look into architecture. So when I got into my first architecture class, the professor was introducing skills and T squares and measuring devices and printing devices. And it’s like, “What? Doesn’t everybody know this?” This was in Maryland. This is strange. After all, I’m in the United States, everybody should know what a T square is or everyone should know what a ruler is or a scale or how to transfer something like a quarter in scale to a foot. So I felt at that point that I had a leg up on my classmates and decided to stay with architecture. And then got hooked with architecture after that.

SSR: Got it. So you decided to come to the states for school. Where did you end up going school?

VBL: So I went to Montgomery College to do a two year degree and then Catholic University to finish off my BSC in architecture. And then eventually Columbia for an M. Arch architecture.

SSR:Oh, wow. How did growing up though in Nigeria affect you, I think, or influence you, at least in your design, in your thought process?

VBL: Great, great question. My family actually came from Togo, which is two countries away from Nigeria. And Togo was a French colony at that time so their ways of doing things were totally different from the way Nigeria, which was an English colony, did things at that time. So you saw these two cultures. I grew up in these two cultures of African, both were African, but ne was heavily influenced by the French and the other was heavily influenced by the British. So I got the sense that something was somewhat different. That’s one. Secondly, the overarching African culture was one where family was very, very important. The idea that we had to fend for one another, you had to essentially live as a village, where you had parents, but your parents meant they were your parents, but your uncles were also your parents, your cousins were your siblings.

So the whole thing about not depending on the government, but depending on family was very influential in the way I thought about things. And then we had to build our own things. We built our own toys. We built our own houses. So as a child, I was influenced by doing things for yourself and not waiting for anybody else to do them for you. And then looking at these nuances of how the French lived and how the English lived. All of those things were things that influenced my thinking. And then finally, art was a major part of our lives. Like I said, my older brother, he also was a surveyor who was influenced by my father to be a surveyor, but then he branched out into construction, into interior design, and he was a painter. So art was everywhere. Everyone had to do something, everything turned into art one way or the other

SSR: Interesting. Love that.

VBL: Yeah.

SSR: And so you go to school for advertising, switch over to architecture. Did you fall in love with it? Once you started getting into it, was there something about it that really struck you?

VBL: Yeah, that’s a great question. I knew that this was what I had to do. I couldn’t do anything else. My siblings, my sister’s an accountant, one is a doctor. That’s their thing. Mine was just essentially architecture. To me, architecture is like a puzzle that has all of these disparate parts. You’ve got people, you’ve got codes, you’ve got zoning, you’ve got financing. So the whole idea of being this person who was in the midst of this puzzle, where you were putting the puzzle together, but at the same time you were part of the puzzle that ended up becoming a city or neighborhood or a building or something that has been very… It’s got me hooked. Let’s just put it that way. It’s some something that I felt that I had to do. And then I realized that with architecture, there’s a need to do greater things with what we do. So to me, it’s a voice that enables me and everyone that I work with to help benefit the societies that we work in. So it’s become my voice in other words.

SSR: Right. And what was your first job out of school?

VBL: Yeah, my first project, the first job was working with Max Bond, who was my mentor, one of my best mentors. I just moved to New York City to Columbia Graduate School of Architecture and met Max in a review. And he took me under his wing and I worked in his firm. And the first project that I worked on was the Schaumburg Library in Manhattan. And it was just to design a small kiosk in the Schaumburg. And he essentially gave me free rein to do whatever I wanted to do, of course on his auspices. And that was nice. The other thing too that I worked on briefly was the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta, just drawings, by the way, not anything that ended up becoming part of the building because the building had been built when I started to work with his firm.

So we became friends and I learned a lot from him. And I learned mostly his philosophy was to always use architecture to benefit society. That was his work. So essentially galvanize as many people to create architecture that would essentially empower people who lived, worked, and played in the buildings that you’ve built.

SSR: Right. And good design for all, right?

VBL: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely right.

SSR: How long did you work with Max?

VBL: I worked with the firm from ’82 to ’92, actually. Almost 10 years. So part of it was interning in his office during school when I was getting my degree. And then the firm got merged, he merged the firm with Davis Brody Bond.

SSR: Okay.

VBL: Or they became Davis Brody Bond. So I worked with them. And then at that point then went off on my own in ’93 to set up my firm. And we did quite a lot of projects. We did some notable projects where a University in Zimbabwe, which was great. It was called the National University of Science and Technology in Zimbabwe which was the actual first planned and built university in Zimbabwe. So that was one of the projects that I worked on. In ’92, I went off on my own.

SSR: So the project in Zimbabwe, was that while you were still with Bond or was that your first project?

VBL: Yes, with bond. It was with bond. It was with Max.

SSR: And what was it like to create something from the ground up that hadn’t been built there?

VBL: It was fantastic. It was a collaboration with other firms, obviously there were some local firms. Some of whom had worked with… One of the partners had actually worked as an intern with Max, and then went off to Zimbabwe, became a known architect. And hen invited Max to do the university. It was interesting because it was foreign. It was a totally different time zone, totally different hemisphere, which is another thing, when it’s cold there, it’s hot here. So we had to adapt to that. We essentially used a lot of green technology, even at that time, green was starting to become something, but we used a lot of that, like natural ventilation, using things like the venture effect to cool the classrooms without air conditioning and what have you. But it was quite interesting. It was interesting. It was also interesting to work with the head of the school, the person who set up the school and his philosophy of education in Zimbabwe. And it was quite an experience, a great experience. And I’m happy to see that the school is thriving very well now.

SSR: That’s great. And what made you decide to go off on your own and take that leap of faith?

VBL:Again, I’d come from an entrepreneurial family. My path was to get off on my own, obviously. It also enabled me to scale down the kind of work that we were doing. Say, for example, with the university project that we did in Zimbabwe, there were a lot of people, there were a lot of players. But by going off on my own, I was able to now do… And I started off doing houses in New Jersey, in Alpine, specifically. So I was able to now look at buildings that were smaller, buildings that I could detail, and buildings that I could really study in a nutshell to get a sense of how the profession has a relationship to the built environment. So going back to doing my own firm enabled me to look at architecture from a different perspective and a different scale.

And also, one of the things that I wanted to add to it is that throughout the time that I… So Max became Dean of City College in 1985, and he invited me to teach as well. So I thought at City from ’85 to ’90, something like that. And while I was doing that, I also was learning. Even though I was teaching, to me, teaching is also another form of learning. In my mind, it’s an R and D part of the work that we do. So with teaching, and then I went to teach at Yale and then to came back to Columbia. So my trifecta has always been practice where we’re learning to put things together, whether there are now bigger projects. At that time, there were smaller projects. There was teaching and of course, trying to do as much community engagement as possible.

SSR: Yeah. Amazing. So what do you love about teaching? Is it that learning? Is it getting the ideas from the kids? What is it that you love about it?

VBL:  Well, teaching is dialogue. It’s always dialogue. And we always try to perfect our dialogue. We try to perfect our communication with one another. Like you said, the younger generation is always on the cutting edge of education in one way. They’re a lot more intuitive and sometimes more inquisitive. And that pushes me to constantly look at the way they think as well. So teaching has always been something that I’ve… Besides the fact that when students do the work and they get the passion and they put that passion into the work, essentially it elevates the way I feel about what we’ve done. So teaching is this collaborative effort. And I don’t necessarily see myself as a teacher. I see myself more as a coach, someone who elicits ideas from all of the students to create something that we all benefit from.

SSR:Yeah. No, that’s amazing. Is there one project that you look back at with your own company that you are most proud of or that you learned the most from? Because I’m sure you learned something from every project, but one that was one that you look back on and you’re like, “That’s it, that’s the one”?

VBL: Yeah. That’s a great question. I look at my projects as if they’re individuals. I try to give a spirit to each project. It’s like a child. I have two daughters and I love both of them in their own way. They’ve got their own characters, and I have to deal with each one like that. And so our buildings are all different. They’re never the same because they relate to the context, they relate to people who live there, they relate to the communities. But if I were to say my favorite project to date and my most recent project, one of my recent projects is Homes Street. Homes Street is a project that we did with a development group that’s called Bronx Pro. And we essentially did a lot of community engagement and getting a sense of what’s needed in the community.

And so the project is a senior residential project, eight story building, that houses about 63 apartments. And they’re all seniors. And it’s all a hundred percent affordable. But what we did was put in a lot of amenities in them like gyms, and also, it’s an intergenerational project where the ground level is used by a group that’s called Dream Yards. And what they do is they train kids from the neighborhood, from the community in the South Bronx on how to do things like gaming. And so you get this mix where you get the seniors that live upstairs, they come downstairs to interact with the kids, who again, give them a sense of, they train the seniors on new technologies as well. So that project, I think is one of my proudest moments.

A lot of people applied for through the HPD application because it’s a hundred percent affordable. And the people who won, who got to live in the apartments, to me, have benefited a lot. The other thing too that we were able to do is that I was able to include my artwork in all of the buildings where we included the artwork was also a way finding device that enabled each person, each floor to be its own individual floor. And we’ve had a lot of positive reactions from people live there.

SSR: Wow.

VBL: So I would say that’s one of my prouder moments. Yeah.

SSR: And so you do your own art?

VBL: Yes.

SSR: What type of art do you do?

VBL: Yeah. The art is again an exploration. It’s not really for sale. Most of the art has been to donate to the projects that we do, but it’s an exploration of the urban context. I use it to explore materiality, to explore the spirit of the neighborhood, or the spirit of the site. And then it becomes a piece of art. Sometimes it looks like the buildings, sometimes it doesn’t, but I don’t care. So long as I understand what we did there. It just gives me a sense of pride. And now we are now blending it with floor signs, so this is the third floor, but it’s got art, and this is a fourth floor, it’s got art.

SSR: Cool. So is it something you’ve always done? Were you always drawing as a kid? I know you said your brother was an artist.

VBL: Yes. It’s something that I’ve always… If I were ever to retire from architecture, which I don’t know if that’ll be possible, the art would be my lifeblood. It would be my other thing. In fact, if anyone would say, “What do you do?” I would say, “I’m an artist and an architect.” And I try to blend both as much as possible without imposing my views as an artist, because being an artist, you have some control of what you’re doing. But at the same time, with the art, I let the art become what it wants to be. Whereas with architecture, there are lots of voices that if one listened to them would end up creating this project that is art in its own, where you’re taking the community to create something that everyone benefits from. Whereas with art, it’s taking an individual and using the community as the precedent to create the art. So it’s all merged into one for me.

SSR: Love it. And do you have a studio where you do your art at home?

VBL: Yeah, in my office. Yeah, I do it in the office when everybody’s left. Yeah.

SSR: That’s awesome.

VBL: Or I do it in my head and then figure out a great way to get it done.

SSR: Exactly. So the Urbal Graph, right?

VBL: Yes.

SSR: And it was the first lead silver certified affordable housing development. Why was that important to you to attain that? Or was that coming from the client or did you push that? That was almost 10 years ago.

VBL: Right. It was collective, it was both the clients… The clients were HCCI, Harlem Churches for Community Improvement and Jonathan Rose. Jonathan Rose Companies has always been on the leading edge of environmentally conscious work. So they pushed it. And we also pushed it. The project was very important. Again, as the community’s aging, we needed to make sure that the quality of the work, the air that people breathe, the water that they drink, everything was something that would give them the best possible housing standards. It was again, a very important project in terms of how we treated the street and the relationship of our building to the context. So it took the materiality of the adjacent buildings but at the same time in a contemporary, used the contemporary language to make the building stand out.

And I think the residents benefited because of the program in the building. So there’s a health component that is part of the building that is open to the community and also to the building. And then there’s the senior building. And then there are all of the amenities that service people who live there. And again, at that time, there were a lot of people who applied and the people who got into the apartments were very lucky to have done that.

SSR: Yeah. I was having this conversation with somebody the other day that affordable housing doesn’t have to be… Good design doesn’t have to be expensive. So how do you work to create these beautiful spaces or spaces that really bring something to people that can’t afford a lot, but at the same time you still bring great design? So what’s that balance? Because I feel like sometimes people just assume there’s no budget. But there are budgets then it’s just how do you spend it correct? And how do you look at it from your point of view?

VBL: Yes. A great question. So it’s all about relationships. I think one of my proudest projects as well is the La Peninsula project that we’re completing the first phase of right now. And that project is a collaboration between WXY, Claire Weiss and her company, and Elizabeth Kennedy. And the developers have also become collaborators. And I’m not knocking developers, but some just want to get from point A to point B. Some developers, like in this case, there’s the Hudson Companies, Mutual Housing of New York. And I think they have the same philosophy that we do. And Gilbane. Gilbane is also one of the developers. And their attitude is to just give the best. I think at the end of the day, we’re looking at a win-win relationship and a win-win situation between people who live in the buildings and the people who are the purveyors, or what would call the shepherds or the developers.

So if we build buildings that people like and they love and they benefit from living there, they take care of those buildings a lot more. And thus, the people who own the buildings, the city, the developers, the different agencies who have a relationship, benefit from that. So the objective is to try to create a balanced society by giving people nice, affordable places to live. And I think once we all have that as our mandate or as our objective, we then use our creativity in whatever way to deploy resources that we use to build into ways that benefit people who live and work in those buildings. And I think it’s just being able to get the right people, right philosophies. And for example, my relationship with WXY is one that has grown.

We both started teaching at the same time. And we’ve always talked about working together, same with Elizabeth Kennedy. And now we’ve got that opportunity and we share the same philosophy. And by so doing, when I have something that I can’t get through, then Claire comes in and she pitches in, or Elizabeth comes in and she pitches in so that we’re able to get the most that we can for the end user.

SSR: Okay.

I’d say I think it’s all about dialogue and relationships. And I think once you have that incentive to do the right thing, then everything falls in place. And again, with the little La Peninsula, I’m not only saying Gilbane, MHANY, and Hudson are the only players. The city has been a part of this. HPDs has been part of it. EDC has been part of it. The mayors of this has been part of it. So all of these voices have come together, given us the encouragement to do luxury housing, if you want to call it that, for an affordable development.

SSR: Yeah. No, it’s great. And you’ve done a lot of work, obviously in Harlem and the Bronx. And what are some of the key takeaways you’ve learned from working there and how do you think this city, New York city is helping to rethink what affordable housing is?

VBL: I’d say the key takeaway is to engage people. It’s really community involvement. When there’s no community involvement, you get a lot of backlash, you get a lot of resistance. People naturally just don’t want change for the sake of change. So if you get them involved early enough, and you show them what the change could be, then it makes everything a win-win, it makes things easier. So we’ve found that it’s important to talk to the community boards early. It’s important to talk to the stakeholders in the communities early, to make them a part of the design process. For example, we had a project in the Bronx several years ago, Diego Beekman Houses, and we did multiple charrettes with the community. It was a very tough neighborhood, but they were starting to change.

So we had in the charrettes, we actually took bus rides to other parts of the city where there were housing developments that were successful. And we came back, we asked them what they wanted, they talked about it. And then we implemented the design in the public spaces, in the open spaces. And several years later, I ran into one of the people that had been in the charrettes, and she was working for a development company as one of their community liaisons. And she learned this from the charrette. So there’s this ripple effect that if you know how other people live, you can essentially do the same thing with the right resources or the right guidance. So our role has always been about technology transfer, one way or the other. And that’s the key point here is, talk to people, find out what their needs are, find out what’s hurting them, find out what they would like to aspire to.

And somehow then figure out a way to use the elements that are at our disposal to make it happen. One of the other things too, is that I think with the pandemic and Black Lives Matter, it may be something that I think, but I am actually seeing it, I think there’s a need for cities to empower people. So this whole thing about health and wellness is a thing, it’s a real thing in development. And if you, as a developer, you are responding to an RFP that has asked for health and wellness, and you’re not responding to that, you’re just responding to bricks and mortar, you are most likely not going to get in, at least as far as a lot of the projects that we’ve been involved in. So we try to make sure that the projects that we work on have those elements, they’ve got something that propels people, propels the community, as far as economic empowerment, health, wellness, and just psychological stability in all of the work that we do.

SSR: That’s amazing. What’s your firm like? How many people and what kind of culture do you try to instill?

VBL: There are 12 people in our firm. It’s a small firm. And we do a lot of collaboration. And that’s that’s thing. The idea is in our studio, there are no walls. Everybody listens to what everybody’s saying. Everybody’s multitasking. At least at this point, since the pandemic, 70% of the firm has been working remotely. So we have daily meetings to bring our minds back into the same room, and then we go off and do the work, and then come back again to continually do that. I encourage learning as much as possible because I’m an academician in one way or the other. And a lot of our students come from City College, they come from City Tech. They stay with us for as long as they can, and they learn a lot and move on to bigger firms.

The firm is 80% minority. And I think it’s important to do that because they are not enough minority, black and brown students or architects who’ve got the opportunity to do the kind of work that we’re doing. So we encourage that as much as we can.

SSR: Yeah.

VBL: And the whole idea about learning. And we make mistakes. Of course, I’m the architect of record. I’m responsible for it, for some of those mistakes, so I try to make sure that we correct the mistakes before they become expensive. But I like mistakes. I want mistakes. I want to learn from mistakes because that’s how we grow. And sometimes those mistakes turn out to be great things too. So we also encourage everyone’s voice in the process. So each project has to have everyone’s voice somehow. You have to see part of your DNA in the project. So everyone feels like, “Wow, I contributed to this.” Not only do the clients contribute to it, but people who work on the project contribute to it as well.

SSR: Is there one mistake that turned into something great that has stuck with you?

VBL: Oh, there’s so many that I don’t even want to mention. Really, there’s so many. Oh my God. One of the things that we did, there was a project, which again, was a nice project. We had gone through this, it’s called the Union Baptist Church in White Plains. It took us like three years to get the city to rezone this particular site. And so they gave us a height limit in terms of how high we could make the building. We ended up making the mistake through a structural engineer who made columns higher so that the buildings were eight feet higher than the maximum height. Obviously, we had to figure out a way to bring it down so that we stay within the context of the zoning envelope. So that was one that I always think about, but I have not made again. So we learn from mistakes. I think mistakes are good. They’re expensive, but make sure you don’t make them twice.

SSR: So how have the last few years changed you as a leader with everything that we’ve endured?

VBL: Yeah. I have become more compassionate, I think. Being an architect, and again, I’m not saying this… You tend to become somewhat complacent in terms of how you do things and how you relate to people. Sometimes the product or the end goal becomes the objective. And I see it with clients, I see it with colleagues. But I think the pandemic leveled everybody off, at least people in my sphere. Maybe we’re going back to normal now, but I was by it in terms of relatives who had passed. So, that shocked me. It also made me realize that this is really temporal, this whole experience, what we are doing. So I look at time a little differently now. I look at time in the framework of the buildings that we do, in that, they’re probably, they’re not probably, they are going to outlast our lifetimes.

And most likely those future generations that are living in those buildings will maybe not know what we did to get the projects to where they are, but it’s made me more compassionate to think about, “Okay, how can we make this buildings the best possible project so that future generations can benefit from them?” Obviously, the thing with social distancing and all of the codes that have come with the pandemic have been things that we are having to deal with, with our buildings. In terms of racial relations and Black Lives Matter, again, I see a new generation of people that are starting to realize that where we live on a ship. Planet earth is a ship. And what concerns me concerns everybody else. Obviously, my role as an architect is really like I’m doing quantum physics where what I think will affect everything else.

It’ll affect people who work, people who live, people who will breathe. And it’ll affect the materiality of the work that we do. So the way we think about our work is one that is a lot more, I would call it, compassionate. And I think Black Lives Matter is doing that too. It’s making people realize that we’re related to one another, and that whatever we do has that impact. Obviously, when you look at Ukraine and you look at all these wars that are going on, it’s almost counter the whole idea of coming together as a group and recognizing our relationship. But I think that will pass at some point, and I think the objective of evolution is recognizing that we have to take care of the planet. And part of the planet is our interracial interconnectivity. We have to really look at how we’re related to one another.

SSR: Yeah, for sure. And how do you make sure that your projects empower the communities that they’re in? What’s part of the process to make sure that you all are doing that?

VBL: Let’s take La Peninsula as an example. So there used to be a building on the side that was a detention center for youth. We interviewed the community to see if they wanted us to use elements of that detention center. And they all said, “No.” So that’s one way of empowering the community. The community says, no, it’s no. That’s it. So they get the buy-in. That’s one. Then we also brought in partners and stakeholders from the community that are now going to be a part of the development. There’s a bakery, there’s a beer brewery, there’s a dance theater. There will be a bank. There’s a health component. There’s a school. All of those things are things from the community that we’re in that Homes Point neighborhood that are now part of the project. So that’s a second way.

And then in the planning of the site, what we did was we created a central plaza that’s part of the development around which all of the buildings actually surround the plaza. And then created these streets that permeate the plaza so the streets are connected to the rest of the community. So people from the neighborhood are free to walk into the development. And then the third layer is to create these open spaces so there’s the plaza, that’s open space for the community. And then there are open spaces for the residents as well on various levels in the building. And then finally, materials that we used in the buildings. For example, all of the buildings have solar panels so that the energy cost is reduced considerably for residents. The buildings are highly insulated. They’re probably going to be lead gold certified. And so all of that. And then there are amenities that go into the project like daycare, laundry rooms, recreational rooms, spaces for your gyms, things that benefit the community as a whole. I think those are things that are brought that in my mind, in our minds, that make projects successful.

SSR: Is there one part of the process that you love the most?

VBL: Oh wow. That’s a good question. Yeah, I like designing. I like the design part of the project, but it’s all part of the dialogue. So to me at this point in my experience, in my life, it’s all one, it’s all one. Some of it is not good, where you get disagreements, but then that’s part of the process. To answer that question, I think the part that I like the most is solving the problem. It’s big. But it’s solving the problem. And how do we solve the problem? And the problem is, how do we galvanize the community? How do we get the most for the community? How do we future proof the buildings? And how do we enable people who live in the buildings to grow in terms of their health, in terms of their wealth, in terms of their culture, and in terms of their social and moral makeup? That’s the part that I love the most, I think.

I still draw, but that’s just a small part of it. If you had asked me that 20 years ago, I’d say, “Oh yeah, I like the designing part,” but I think it’s a lot more than that. I went to one of these sites the other day and there was this guy, this was a Homes Street site, and this guy had been homeless. This was just before the pandemic, his wife had died. He was diabetic so they had amputated his legs. And so we went into the apartment to just say, “Hello, how are things going?” And he was saying, “Man, you saved my life.” I said, “I didn’t save your life. It’s the system that saved your life. It’s all of us that work together, including you, that you are here now.” But the whole idea that this man was so grateful to be living here in that state, it was like he had a new lease on life.

And to me, I think that is something that I will cherish forever. To hear someone say that we use our talents in our own way to get them to live like this is something that really touched my heart. And it’s not only about drawing. It’s all about all these other things that we’ve been talking about.

SSR: Yeah. Oh, for sure. How do you constantly stay inspired?

VBL: Art.

SSR: Art?

VBL: Yes. The expo was absolutely inspiring. Just being able to see people do things differently. I’d imagine the expo was, if you had looked at it five years ago was different from the last expo. So attending those sort of events, looking at artwork, looking at what other people are doing, what other architects are doing, what other agencies are doing, I think there’s this zeitgeist that is pushing everyone to I think do the right thing. That would be my response to that.

SSR: We always end the podcast with the title of the podcast. So what has been your greatest lesson or lessons learned along the way?

VBL: Communication, dialogue, compassion, and just doing the right thing. That’s it. Yeah. Communicate, be compassionate, and just do the right thing. No matter where you are, no matter what sort of resources you have, I think that’s our goal. I am particularly very conscious about inequities in our environment, even though we talked about how things seem to be changing, but it’s important that given where we are, we have to try to make sure that future generations are better off than where we… They’re better off with what we’re giving them than where they are.

SSR: Yeah, exactly. Well, thank you for all that you are doing. And we’re big admirers of you so thank you for taking this last 45 minutes or so to speak with us. It was such a pleasure.

VBL: Thank you. Thank you so much, Stacy. It’s a lot of fun. Thank you.