Patkau Architects is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. There are currently two principals: John and Patricia Patkau, and three associates: David Shone, Peter Suter and Greg Boothroyd.
In over 30 years of practice, both in Canada and in the United States, Patkau Architects has been responsible for the design of a wide variety of building types for a diverse range of clients. Projects vary in scale from gallery installations to master planning, from modest houses to major urban libraries. Many projects have involved functional programming, management of detailed public processes, and design of complex buildings and sites.
Current work includes a Visitors’ Centre at Fort York National Historic Site in Toronto, the Marcel A Desautel Faculty of Music and the School of Art at the University of Manitoba, the Goldring Centre for High Performance Sport at the University of Toronto, a series of Cottages at Fallingwater, Mill Run, Pennsylvania, as well as a variety of residential projects in diverse locations ranging from a northern island off the coast of British Columbia to a farm in Ad’Diriyyah, Saudi Arabia.
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.
