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.

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.

Patkau Architects' profile page

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, and two associates: Shane O'Neill and Peter Suter. 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.

"Within the pages of Material Operations you discover curiosity and a drive to understand more about ways to work and things to work with." - Vancouver Sun

"This unique survey features eleven experimental works, from their 2010-11 Skating Shelters for Winnipeg's frozen Red River, to the nearly complete Temple of Light overlooking British Columbia's Kootenay Bay. Each work is presented more as research than resolution. Initiated in response to competition calls, serendipitous opportunities and sustained architectural questions, these projects are largely free from the usual client-driven constraints, and share a freedom to fail constructively..The projects collected in Material Operations are the products of curiosity about worldly phenomena, balanced by constructive doubt that status quo practice can release the full potential of making and dwelling."
- Canadian Architect