| Henry Sears | |
| Birth Date: | 30 October 1929 |
| Birth Place: | Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Death Place: | Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Education: | B. Arch |
| Alma Mater: | University of Toronto |
| Occupation: | Architect, planner |
| Movement: | Modernism |
| Spouse: | Doreen Sears (m. 1951) |
| Children: | 2 |
Henry Sears (October 30, 1929 – March 19, 2003) was a Canadian modernist architect, and an urban and gallery planner. He was a founding partner of both Klein & Sears Architects and Sears & Russell Architects Ltd.[1] His work centred around social housing development on a neighbourhood scale.[2] It spanned Canada, the United States and Europe.[3]
Sears began his career in 1958, opening an architecture firm with Jack Klein.[4] The firm maintained close ties to Raymond Moriyama, with whom they shared an office that opened on the same day. 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.[5]
As part of Sears & Russell Architects Ltd., beginning in 1987,[6] 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.
Throughout his career, Sears developed an architectural style. His primary material was brick,[7] 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 or courtyards, 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 or underground. This focus on community interaction and involvement was part of a movement based on the Defensible space theory. Using this approach, Sears designed Alexandra Park which, in the 1990s,[8] went on to become the first self-managed public housing initiative in Canadian history.
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.[9]