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JOHN BROWN is the editor of theslowhome.com and the founder of the Slow Home Movement. He is a registered architect, real estate broker and Professor of Architecture at the University of Calgary.
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A Long-Established Reputation
Agosta House
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Shaw House
Barnes House
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Patkau Architects was founded in 1978 and is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. There are currently three principals: John Patkau, Patricia Patkau and Michael Cunningham, and three associates: David Shone, Peter Suter and Greg Boothroyd.
In the 1980’s a series of early houses, schools, libraries and galleries helped to establish the firm’s design reputation. Success in a number of international design competitions in the 1990’s set the stage for our current practice.
Since then, the work in the office has expanded to include a wide variety of building types. Projects vary in scale from gallery installations to urban planning, from houses to major urban libraries, from glassware and furniture design to research into sustainable practise and the future of educational technologies. Current work includes a 320 bed student housing project at the University of Pennsylvania, an ‘ecological’ hotel in Beacon, New York, the new central library in Montreal, an interdisciplinary Center for Music, Art and Design at the University of Manitoba, an aquatic ecosystems research lab at the University of British Columbia and a major addition to the Winnipeg Public Library.
While circumstances of the work change, our interests remain constant. We continue to explore the depth of the discipline, understanding it as a critical cultural act that engages our most fundamental desires and aspirations. While we tend to refuse singular definitions of architecture: as art, as ‘green’, as political position, as social construct, we continue to attempt to gather all of these into the rich, complex and vital depths that we believe architecture to be.
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We believe that our homes and neighborhoods should be healthy, vibrant places that uplift the spirit and gracefully fit our needs. We call for an end to poor construction, bad design, misleading marketing, unfair lending practices and environmental neglect in the housing industry. We acknowledge our collective responsibility to create CLOSE, SIMPLE, LIGHT places to live that leave a positive legacy for future generations.
provides design focused information that homeowners can use to improve the quality of how and where they live. It takes its name from the slow food movement which arose as a reaction to the processed food industry. The sprawl of cookie cutter housing that surrounds us is like fast food - standardized, homogenous, and wasteful. It contributes to a too fast life that is bad for us, our cities, and the environment. In the same way that slow food raises awareness of the food we eat and how these choices affect our lives, Slow Home empowers you to take more control of your home and improve the quality of how you live while reducing your environmental impact and futureproofing the long term investment value of your home.
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