The Architectural Team

The Architectural Team, Inc. is an architecture, interiors and master planning firm that has been in practice since 1971. Its only listed office is at 50 Commandant’s Way on Admiral’s Hill in Chelsea, Massachusetts, across the Mystic River from Boston. The site doesn’t publish a headcount or a formal list of sectors. The firm is the architect on the Mary Ellen McCormack Redevelopment in South Boston, the rebuild of Boston’s oldest public housing site led by WinnCompanies with the Boston Housing Authority. WinnCompanies’ own announcement names the firm in that role, alongside general contractor Lee Kennedy Company in joint venture with H.J. Russell. Building A, the first phase, is a 112,000-square-foot apartment block.

Four architects, including Bob Verrier and Joe Kelly, launched the firm in 1971 as Boston Architectural Team; the present name dates from 1985. Interiors became a named in-house practice, TAT Interiors, in 2012. The office is at 50 Commandant’s Way at Admiral’s Hill in Chelsea, which the firm describes as across the Mystic River from Boston, and it states that it works nationwide.

Housing is the center of gravity, and the subcategories matter because each carries different financing. The firm names affordable, workforce, mixed-income and market-rate multifamily, plus senior living including affordable housing for residents 62 and older, veterans’ supportive housing and public housing. Alongside that sit historic preservation and adaptive reuse, hospitality and mixed-use. An architect who has moved between low-income housing tax credit deals, public housing redevelopment and a luxury hotel has worked three different sets of rules on the same building type.

The adaptive-reuse record is the distinguishing number: around 300 historic developments adapted, covering mills, power plants, schools and similar buildings, with more than 155,000 housing units completed as of the firm’s fiftieth anniversary. Converting a mill into apartments involves historic tax credits, structural retrofit and code equivalencies that new construction never raises, and that volume of repetition is hard to substitute for.

Services beyond design include master planning and what the firm calls moderate rehabilitation — the scope between a cosmetic refresh and a gut renovation, and the one occupied housing owners most often need. Sustainability advice is offered as its own service line.

Recognition is heavy and current: more than 300 award-winning projects and more than 200 design excellence awards. Recent ones include an Architizer A+ 2025 award for sustainable adaptive reuse at Stone Mill Lofts, an ENR Best Projects 2025 residential and hospitality award for The Cove, an MFE 2025 Senior Grand Winner for Residences at Mill 8, and a 2026 Paul and Nikki Tsongas Award for Residences on Appleton. Older ones reach back to a 1988 National Historic Preservation Award for the Walter Baker Chocolate Factory. Project certifications include LEED Gold at Residences at Brighton Marine and LEED Platinum at The Homes at Old Colony Phase I. Staff credentials include AIA, NCARB, LEED AP and CPHC; Bob Verrier was elected to the AIA College of Fellows in 2012. Headcount is not published.