Patkau Architects | Material Operations

On Thursday June 22nd from 5 to 7pm, we welcome John and Patricia Patkau and their team to our showroom to discuss their new publication Patkau Architects: Material Operations. If you would like to join us for this event, please RSVP by filling out this form.

Vancouver-based Patkau Architects is known for creating innovative, sculptural buildings that convey artistic expression through the purposeful use of materials. Patkau Architects: Material Operations reveals the architectural philosophy and techniques that drive the firm’s extraordinary constructions. These smaller-scale, research-driven projects complement their major building commissions, including the Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver, the Audain Art Museum in Whistler, and the Capilano Library in Edmonton.

Working directly with materials-bending them, breaking them, feeling their texture, mass, and strength-provides a depth of understanding that visual observation alone cannot. The firm’s creations demonstrate how attending to and playing with specific materials yields a refreshed and expanded perspective on the possible.

Patkau Architects: Material Operations investigates how the qualities of commonly available construction materials and unconventional techniques produce buildable, expressive forms with inherent structural capacities and evocative identities.