Forty years after inaugurating their now eminently successful architectural practice, John and Patricia Patkau are ?beginning again.? So they happily declare in their new book Material Operations. 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 BC?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. Released from normative expectations, these projects embrace idiosyncrasies and mistakes as possible beginnings. Eschewing conventional methodologies, they revel in rigorous play.    Material Operations, by Patkau Architects
While this research may be open-ended, certain premises are definitive. As the book?s title suggests, each project begins with a material substance. Indeed, the authors seek to reposition materiality as foundational to design: ?a source of discrete challenges to apparent possibilities that spur the will, seed the imagination, and exercise critical attentiveness,? as they write. 
On the surface, the featured materials are basic: wood veneer, stainless steel, dimensional lumber and knit fabric. The enacted operations are li...