Griffin Enright Architects

The studio

The Los Angeles-based firm of Griffin Enright Architects, established in 2000 by Margaret Griffin, AIA and John Enright, FAIA, LEED AP, fuses interests in innovation and experimentation with a desire to explore cultural complexities relative to the built environment. Their versatile practice includes projects ranging from large-scale commercial and residential commissions to furniture design and gallery installations, at the local and international level. Their work moves beyond the traditional scope of architectural practice, underscoring connections with the surrounding urban fabric and landscape by reinforcing existing conditions or creating new ones that allow architecture, urban context and landscape to be experienced in new ways.

Innovation and experimentation in the initial stages of program assessment informs their design concepts, as well as their choices of materials, methods of construction, and approach towards integrating landscape and environmental issues with architectural development. Griffin Enright’s comprehensive approach to design depends on the simultaneous blurring and exploitation of distinctions between inside/outside, built form/landscape, site/urban context and theory/practice. There is often a highly narrative approach to the way in which their buildings are experienced, with focused attention to framed views and enhanced perspectives that benefit from a planned progression through fluidly linked spaces. Inventive and strategic methods of working are matched by an emphasis on the relationship with the client, who becomes a partner in creating the inherent character of each project.

In addition to guiding an emergent practice, Margaret and John are educators in design and technology at SCI_Arc, where John is the chair of the undergraduate department. This involvement in the educational realm assures that innovative and forward-thinking approaches to problem solving are integral to the approach of the firm. The pursuit of new potential is always paramount over the discovery of a single, fixed resolution. They are also active with non-profit and volunteer work, serving on local and state boards that support innovation in art, architecture, design, and urbanism. With these experiences, they continue to exhibit their skill in collaboration and involvement with the architectural community at large.

The firm is the recipient of over forty awards for design excellence including the 2006 American Architecture Award from the Chicago Athenaeum. The firm’s work has also been published and exhibited extensively in national and international publications and exhibitions and their project ‘Vertical Garden – Schindler’s Paradox Box’ is part of the permanent collection at the MAK (Museum for Applied Art / Contemporary Art) in Vienna, Austria.