News and Features
Profile of Architect Gregory Henriquez - continued
By Frances Bula published Jun 1, 2011
Gregory Henriquez inherited his architectural zeal from his well-known father. But where Richard designs poetic buildings to suit their location, his son wants to create a more meaningful world
In every public hearing for those many projects, it's Henriquez on the front line. "He looks them in the eye. It's a sincere conversation," says Gillespie, who can sometimes be found at the back of public meetings while Henriquez absorbs the anxiety up front. Which makes it all the odder that Henriquez ended up at the centre of two of the most controversial West End developments in recent years-one meant to help him link to his father's work, the other to accomplish a social mission.
Gregory Henriquez attracted attention from the beginning (partly, no doubt, because of his father's reputation). The panels that hand out awards have been dazzled by his ability to use his buildings as social statements, as skillfully functional boxes, and as artful expressions of their human and physical contexts. Typical praise: "This project encompasses profound social values while defending the notion that urban living can be vital from a sustainable and rehabilitation perspective and still be imaginatively playful with limited finances." (This for his Lore Krill social-housing project, with its brick exterior echoing Woodward's.)
Before Woodward's, Henriquez did only one or two projects a year-typically something that meant a lot to him like the Bella Bella community school or a social-housing project. He turned his own house-a 1948 Fred Hollingsworth post-and-beam that Zena fell in love with-into a major renovation that is now home to them, their 13-year-old son, and 10-year-old daughter. His daughter's learning difficulties takes up much of his spare time. (He has few hobbies, he says, other than helping her school, Kenneth Gordon Maplewood in North Vancouver, stay on its feet.) He often used to describe himself as his father's office manager.
