Henry SearsFRAICRCAOAA (October 30, 1929 – March 19, 2003) was a Canadian modernist architect,[1][2] and an urban and gallery planner. He was a founding partner of both Klein & Sears Architects[2] and Sears & Russell Architects Ltd.[3] His work centred around social housing development[2] on a neighbourhood scale.[4] It spanned Canada, the United States and Europe.[3][1]
Career
Sears began his career in 1958, opening an architecture firm with Jack Klein.[5] The firm maintained close ties to Raymond Moriyama, with whom they shared an office that opened on the same day.[2] The Sears family lived on Woodlawn Avenue in the neighbourhood of Summerhill, Toronto for some time, living alongside many other architects and academics on the street and in the area.[1][6]
As part of Sears & Russell Architects Ltd., beginning in 1987,[7] Henry Sears' work shifted focus to the design and planning of cultural institutions. The firm built a team of specialists to adapt to the many areas in which the partners now worked. The geographic reach of Sears & Russell began to shift as well, taking on new clients in the United States and Europe. This produced a balance of national and international work, strengthening Sears' presence abroad.[3]
Throughout his career, Sears developed an architectural style. His primary material was brick,[4][8] influenced by the homogeneity of European communities that use it. This applied a modern approach to a traditional technique and style. Many of his projects had shared communal space such as paths[4] or courtyards,[9] deemed an "exemplary design solution." by James Murray of Canadian Architect, along with the placement of cars outside of the major arteries of the project[4] or underground.[9] This focus on community interaction and involvement was part of a movement based on the Defensible space theory.[4] Using this approach, Sears designed Alexandra Park which, in the 1990s,[10] went on to become the first self-managed public housing initiative in Canadian history.[8]
Sears was named the third most interesting Canadian in 1978 as part of The First Original Unexpurgated Canadian book of Lists with the reasoning that
This Toronto-based architect is a brilliant theoretician and has taken his discipline to new heights, embracing sociology and psychology in helping others to design buildings and institutions which serve the soul as well as the eye.[11]
Buildings
Image
Name
Address
City
Year Completed
Awards
Citation
Atkinson Co-Operative (Alexandra Park)
95-111 Denison Ave., 113-117 Denison Ave., 585-599 Dundas St. W., 170-174 Grange Ave., 161-163 Vanauley Walk, 170 Vanauley Walk, 2-6 White Court Pl., 140-146 Willison Pl.
Toronto, Canada
1969
Canadian Housing Design Council National Design Award (1967) and Honourable Mention (1969)
Henry Sears contributed to the gallery design and curatorial approach of many museums around the globe. When the National Museum of Ireland was lacking display space, they called on Sears to lead the creation of a master plan for a new building on the Collins Barracks, Dublin grounds, along with the functional brief that would act as a guide to implement the change. He found "The challenge was to incorporate the technically demanding requirements of a contemporary museum into the existing historic context appropriately and sensitively." Sears then went on to develop the museum's exhibit strategy and the functional brief for its Irish folklife division. He described that "Working in Ireland seems to have opened a world of possibilities for the firm."[3] Other building design of cultural institutions includes the curatorial centre at Ken Seiling Waterloo Region Museum, a partnership with Joe Somfay Architect Inc.,[62] and additions to both Whitby's Centennial building,[63] and Mississauga's Benares Historic House, where a museum was established in 1995.[64] In Whitby, this new multi-story West Wing was part of a reconfiguration to house a museum and the Whitby archives and, in Sears' words, for the institution to "...play a significant part in the cultural life of the community".[63]
^Bergeron, Claude (1986). Index des périodiques d'architecture canadiens | Canadian architectural periodicals index | 1940-1980. Presses de l'Université Laval. p. 58.
^Bergeron, Claude (1986). Index des périodiques d'architecture canadiens | Canadian architectural periodicals index | 1940-1980. Presses de l'Université Laval. p. 154.