FIRM BIO

Griffin Enright Architects is an award-winning, interdisciplinary Los Angeles-based firm with institutional, cultural, and residential projects built nationally and abroad. Griffin Enright Architects was founded by Margaret Griffin, FAIA, and John Enright, FAIA, LEED AP, as a collaborative design practice that explores new prospects for the built environment through their integration of architectural, urban, landscape, and interior design. Using focused, inventive, and strategic thinking, they pursue unexpected solutions to transform overlooked conditions into landmark projects through their expertise in construction techniques and community engagement.

Careful attention to details of assembly and construction, the utilization of local characteristics of environment and light, and the highest-level craft of materials and geometry merge to activate Griffin Enright projects as uniquely impactful environments. By combining strategic form with building performance and environmental considerations, the office creates work that both inspires and expands the realm of architecture, adding value to their projects and the communities (or individuals) they serve. Transcending the traditional scope of architectural practice, Griffin Enright’s work underscores connections to the surrounding urban fabric and landscape – allowing urban context, architecture, and landscape to be experienced in new, unanticipated ways.

Griffin Enright Architects have received more than 50 commendations for design excellence, including the American Architecture Award, the American Architecture Prize, local and national AIA awards, and have been published extensively in national and international publications and exhibitions. In addition to leading a prominent and progressive practice, principals John and Margaret bridge the profession and the academy as active educators and researchers of contemporary conditions in architecture, teaching design and technology courses at SCI-Arc (Southern California Institute of Architecture) where John is currently the Vice Director. They additionally participate in their community through public service; Margaret is on the City of Santa Monica’s Architectural Review Board and John serves on the Los Angeles Mayor’s Design Advisory Board.

PUBLICATIONS

AWARDS

EXHIBITIONS

  • Margaret Griffin, FAIA, is a co-founder and principal of Griffin Enright Architects, where her designs synthesize form, content, and context to reinterpret and transform environments. Margaret holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Syracuse University and a Master of Architecture from the University of Virginia. She investigated the relationship between urban forms and landforms during her fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, a subject she continues to integrate and examine in her architectural practice. Margaret examines the traditionally dichotomous relationships between built form and environment, site and urban context, space and lightness to punctuate her comprehensive approach to design. In addition to guiding an progressive firm, Margaret extends her architectural research on the design faculty at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). She also serves as a design leader on the Santa Monica Architectural Review Board, where she lends her architectural, urban, and landscape expertise.

  • John Enright, FAIA, LEED AP, is a co-founder and principal of Griffin Enright Architects, where his work consistently demonstrates the power of design thinking to transform architecture. He holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Syracuse University and a Master of Architecture from Columbia University. John brings technical rigor to his design vision: prior to founding his firm, he honed his interests in the complexities of architectural form with the integration of construction information systems and innovative building systems during his lengthy tenure as an associate at Morphosis. At Griffin Enright Architects, his fine attention to detail and interests in strategic form combine to create an expanded architecture that challenges boundaries. John is an influential design leader and augments his practice by participating on the Los Angeles Mayor’s Design Advisory Committee. In academia, he is a professor of design and technology at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), where he is also the Vice Director.

PROJECT APPROACH

The firm’s principals each have over 37 years of experience in the field, and they pride themselves on their inventive and smart solutions to complex architectural problems, resulting in exceptionally creative and award winning results. Focused, inventive, and strategic thinking has allowed the firm to consistently maximize clients’ budgets to achieve more — both literally and aesthetically. Founded in the belief that collaboration yields the most innovative and forward thinking projects, we believe that good design does not require costly expenditures, but rather it emerges through design vision and creative applications and strategies. We see the client as an important collaborator in each of our projects and we work hard to understand inhabitant’s needs, while finding inventive and creative ways not only to meet those needs, but to enhance their experience and expand the uses and interpretations of the space. We believe that design excellence in our environment effects public consciousness and that there is true value in design excellence. There is also a direct correlation between the quality of our environments and the quality of experience that is provided by these environments. Deploying strategies of economy of means, we use sustainable approaches to design that take advantage of attributes of the natural realm. Griffin Enright’s comprehensive approach to design depends on the simultaneous synthesis of multiple criteria and constraints to create innovative design solutions. These design resolutions transcend typical ways of thinking through a problem in order to create new relationships among interdependent conditions, enhancing existing qualities of a place, while creating new and particularly appropriate  identities.

Griffin Enright Architects is a full service architectural office, including Sustainability, Master Planning, Urban Design, Architecture, Interior Design, Interior Architecture, Landscape Design, Entitlements and Programming.