Patkau Architects

Patkau Architects is an innovative architecture and design research studio based in Vancouver, Canada. There are currently four principals: John Patkau, Patricia Patkau, Greg Boothroyd, and David Shone; three senior associates: Peter Suter, Michael Thorpe, and Mike Green; and three associates: Katy Young, Tom Schroeder, and Dimitri Koubatis. In over 44 years of practice, we have been responsible for the design of a wide variety of project types for a diverse range of clients. Projects vary in scale from gallery installations to master planning, from houses to major urban libraries and galleries. Many projects have involved functional programming, management of detailed public processes, and design of complex buildings and sites. The practice is also actively engaged in architectural research. Our current work explores the potential resulting from the response of materials to applications of force. A compedium of these investigations will be publised in Patkau Architects: Material Operations, a forthcoming book published by Princeton Architectural Press. Current work includes the School of Biomedical Engineering at UBC's Vancouver campus; the Thunder Bay Art Gallery in Thunder Bay, Ontario; Kiweki Point in Ottawa; as well as several private commercial and residential projects. As the circumstances of the work change, our interests expand. We seek to explore the full richness and diversity of architectural practice, understanding it as a critical cultural act that engages our most fundamental desires and aspirations. We refuse singular definitions of architecture: as art, as technology, as social service, as environmental agent, as political statement. We embrace all these definitions, together, as part of the rich, complex and vital discipline that we believe architecture to be.