Engaging Her Community: Shaneekua Henry on Entrepreneurship, Housing, and Being Resilient
By Julia Gamolina
Shaneekua Henry is a Co-founder and Principal, alongside her husband Andrew Henry, who together own SLM Architecture P.C. She leads and partners with a multifaceted team of talented designers and engineers. She oversees all projects from conceptual design, construction documentation through completion of their multi-agency approval phases. Shaneekua’s beliefs are that quality design is not only based on knowledge and expertise but also the ability to evoke human emotion. She challenges designers to think of each project as a catalyst for change in quality of life and standard of living. She has been able to build a team based on collaboration and mutual respect for creative thought.
Shaneekua is a native of East New York, Brooklyn. She has received a Diploma from Brooklyn Technical High School and a Bachelor of Architecture from Pratt Institute. She is a Registered Architect in New York and New Jersey. In her conversation with Julia Gamolina, Shaneekua talks about her focus on communities often forgotten, advising young architects to have the confidence to promote themselves.
How did your interest in architecture first develop? What did you learn about yourself in studying it?
As a child I enjoyed art and math. I thought that I wanted to be an art teacher, most likely because my mother was a teacher. It was my father, who was an entrepreneur as a mechanical subcontractor that planted the seed and encouraged me to use my interests to major in architecture while I was in high school.
While studying architecture I learned the following things about myself: that I needed to be resilient, not take no for an answer, and that I needed to use my passion to strengthen and improve my community. Growing up in East New York Brooklyn in the eighties, I saw first-hand what the results of redlining and housing discrimination looked like but as a child of immigrants I also had a strong foundation for entrepreneurship. On one hand I saw buildings burned and abandoned but I also saw my family and other people of color own businesses in the same community.
Metropolitan Community United Methodist Church by SLM.
How did you get your start in the field?
My mother worked in a New York City public school with a woman who was married to a registered architect in Brooklyn. My freshman year at Pratt Institute, I called him to see if I could work in his office for the summer. He had no openings but gave me a list of three other small firms. One person responded who had a practice in Park Slope. I worked the entire summer for lunch money. I remember my friends saying, “I would never work for free.”
Where did you go from there?
In my junior year at Pratt, I applied for a paid fellowship being offered through the David R. Singler Foundation. Later, I earned a summer internship at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. I may have worked for free my freshman year but by the time I submitted my application at SOM, I had experience in an office on my resume. At the end of the summer when it was time to go back to Pratt, I was offered a part-time job.
Although it was a great place to learn because in a firm that size you have so many resources and expansive project budgets, I knew it was not the right place for me. I knew that I wanted to work in my community. I knew that I wanted to build housing. After three years I went to work for Danois Architects. David Danois who was also a Brooklyn Tech and Pratt graduate came out of a community planning and development group in the 70s. He was my employer and mentor for several years.
“I would like to be known simply for caring about and creating spaces for people in communities that often feel forgotten about by the system.”
Where are you in your career today?
Today my Husband and I own our practice called SLM Architecture, P.C. Our primary focus is on sustainable affordable housing and religious buildings. Since starting our architectural practice in 2012, we have completed over 2000 units of resident-in-place preservation housing in New York City. I am especially proud of our work because it represents 2000 families who have been able to remain and thrive in quality affordable homes. We have built a team who understands and knows the value of not only designing within an office but also reaching out and engaging within the communities that we serve. That the most critical part of the design process is listening to and engaging with residents, and walking each apartment in order to fully understand how to create architecture that responds to their concerns and issues.
Looking back at it all, what have been the biggest challenges?
One of my biggest challenges has been building our company. The first three years were extremely difficult because we started our company in 2009 right after the economic crisis with three children. It was during this time as well that I was studying for the ARE. Shortly after I became registered in 2011, we formed the architecture practice.
SLM team at a Habitat for Humanity volunteer event.
The women of SLM on International Women’s Day 2020
What have been the highlights?
I am most proud of our firm’s body of work and its impact on the city’s residents. Some of my highlights have been the personal stories from residents saying: “I am proud of where I live”, “I want to invite people over now,” and “He does his homework in the bathroom, because it’s my son’s favorite room in the apartment.” These are just a few of the highlights of my career but the personal experiences are the ones that remain with me.
Who are you admiring right now and why?
I am admiring young people right now. They are informed, engaged and fearless. I think they are graduating with an understanding of the importance of being environmentally conscious and having an integrated design process at the beginning stages of a project. Young people are speaking out against injustice in their own communities and making changes at record breaking speed.
“I am admiring young people right now...Young people are speaking out against injustice in their own communities and making changes at record breaking speed.”
What is the impact you’d like to have in the world? What is your core mission?
I would like to be known simply for caring about and creating spaces for people in communities that often feel forgotten about by the system. SLM’s core mission is to help 10,000 families, so far we have reached 4,080 families, coming close to our goal. We start each of our projects by walking and documenting hundreds of public housing apartments each year. We take into consideration environmental, social and economic implications to generate responsive solutions because there are too many times that I have seen and heard that when something breaks it never gets fixed properly or my child with asthma has mold growing in their bedroom. I want to have the capacity to be able to solve this problem in a sensitive and sustainable way that is good for both the planet and people.
Exterior rendering of PRC NYCHA Manhattan at 1504 Amsterdam Avenue, by SLM.
Finally, what advice do you have for those starting their career? Would your advice be any different for women?
Don’t feel that you have to follow a path that someone else set for you. Your best decisions are the ones that come as a result of being able to listen to your inner self.
Be confident enough to promote yourself during each interview whether you are trying to get a position in a practice or trying to secure your next project. As a female employer I am on both sides but it also makes me uniquely sensitive to hiring women in the work place. I see so many times where women interview with the same experience as men but have less confidence so we ask for less when we are starting our career. With more women in the work place and as business owners, I think that things will change when we all stand for equitable pay.