Patkau Architects, based out of Vancouver B.C., is the recipient of the RAIC 2023 Architectural Practice Award.
Led by founding principals John and Patricia Patkau, the firm is an architecture practice and design research studio. The team includes principals Greg Boothroyd and David Shone, senior associates Peter Suter, Michael Thorpe and Mike Green, and associates Dimitri Koubatis, Tom Schroeder, and Katy Young.
Working together with shared goals and ideas developed over decades of delivering award-winning buildings, the Patkau team has led the studio on a great diversity of projects ranging from major urban buildings and medium scaled community buildings, to houses, art installations and furniture. Patkau’s commitment to the search for found potential – those aspects of place that can be gathered into an architectural form evocative of locale, circumstance, history, and landscape – is the through-line that distinguishes their work.
Patkau also applies their search for found potential to materials themselves, looking for new ways to shape and combine familiar materials to explore new possibilities and applications. A guiding principle in this work is Material + Force = Form, where form is simultaneously material, space and structure. The studio’s design lab tests these ideas at full scale, both in-house and in workshops around Vancouver, conducting experiments that inform and inspire their building-scale work.
Jury Comment: To say that Patkau Architects has positively influenced the Canadian design landscape of the past half century is very much an understatement. From the late 1970s on, the Vancouver-based practice has executed a deservedly acclaimed body of work, each project defined by its innovation, attention to material and craft, and clarity of vision.
Their considered work with timber structures emerged well before the current timber movement, and their hands-on approach to exploring materiality is reflected in a considered, elegant and sculptural body of work. Patkau Architects’ built work demonstrates a decisive competency in detailing, innovation, and tectonic clarity, while their design research work continues to push an agenda of material exploration that is indicative of a deep and evolving curiosity.
