Architect: William Butterfield
Retreat and Commemoration: Heath’s Court, 1878–82 – Part 3
10.10.2024
Retreat and Commemoration: Heath’s Court, 1878–82 – Part 310.10.2024
This post concludes Nicholas Olsberg’s series on William Butterfield’s Heath’s Court project, the text of which is included in his new book The Master Builder: William Butterfield and his Times to be published by Lund Humphries in October 2024. ‘Sounding corridors’: entry and sequence The driveway brings us into a… Read More
Retreat and Commemoration: Heath’s Court, 1878–82 – Part 2
03.10.2024
Retreat and Commemoration: Heath’s Court, 1878–82 – Part 203.10.2024
This post continues with the second part of Nicholas Olsberg’s text on William Butterfield’s Heath’s Court project, included in his new book The Master Builder: William Butterfield and his Times to be published by Lund Humphries in October 2024. ‘Cycles of the human tale’: the library The elevation of the… Read More
Retreat and Commemoration: Heath’s Court, 1878–82 – Part 1
23.09.2024
Retreat and Commemoration: Heath’s Court, 1878–82 – Part 123.09.2024
William Butterfield’s architectural practice, spanning the entire Victorian era, is the focus of Nicholas Olsberg’s new book The Master Builder: William Butterfield and his Times to be published by Lund Humphries in October 2024. Over the next three weeks, Drawing Matter will reproduce a chapter within The Master Builder that focuses… Read More
Diplomatics and Instrumentality of the Drawing / William Butterfield
21.08.2023
Diplomatics and Instrumentality of the Drawing / William Butterfield21.08.2023
This film is part of series of posts of selected papers from the study symposium at Shatwell Farm, hosted by Drawing Matter and convened by KU Leuven and TU Delft on 27 and 28 April 2023. More about the symposium, and other films and written papers, can be found here. In… Read More
William Butterfield: Forms and Transformations
10.07.2023
William Butterfield: Forms and Transformations10.07.2023
This text was first published in DMJournal No.1: The Geological Imagination (2023). Print copies of the Journal, and subscriptions for the first three issues, are now available through our online bookshop. We are currently accepting abstracts for the third issue of DMJournal. Find more information here. The town of Torquay dates from the days when… Read More
Alternative Histories: 31/44 Architects on William Butterfield
22.02.2019
Alternative Histories: 31/44 Architects on William Butterfield22.02.2019
Dear Sir William, Thank you for forwarding your drawing concerning the proposed alterations to Heath Court, Otter-St-Mary. It is indeed an exciting project. We heard rumour that (y)our client is actually the wealthiest family in Britain. We understand that came with a certain expectation of what their home would be… Read More
Commonplace
12.11.2018
Commonplace12.11.2018
In 1877, London’s Building News reprinted – as the ‘work of two eminent architects, though it cannot be said to be their joint production’ – an elevation, plan, and partial section published by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc as a model town house, noting that this supposed ‘London Residence’ had been adapted – with due… Read More
William Butterfield
06.12.2017
William Butterfield06.12.2017
Nothing Permitted But What Has Been Foreseen William Butterfield eschewed the illustrative perspective, preferring instead to develop even his studies as contract drawings that would serve three tasks: as presentations through which a project could be comprehended, as instructions from which his contractors and clients could not swerve, and as… Read More
Architectural Anxiety
28.09.2011
Architectural Anxiety28.09.2011
– Niall Hobhouse and Nicholas Olsberg
This instalment explores the rich pathologies of architectural anxiety: the nagging pressure of what architects know and admire, or have seen and rejected. Or of what it is in the work of other architects, and in their own past practice, which they are driven always to acknowledge in the buildings… Read More
Simplification
06.05.2011
Simplification06.05.2011
– Niall Hobhouse and Nicholas Olsberg
The first of these short excursions into work on paper looked at how drawings were used to place built forms in their settings. Grounded in traditions of illustration, they were spacious, suggestive and pictorial. Architects draw to many purposes. In Part II, on Simplification, we turn from the arts of… Read More
The Master Builder: William Butterfield and His Times
27.03.2025
The Master Builder: William Butterfield and His Times27.03.2025
– Nicholas Ray
It’s the sign of a good book about an architect that you want to drop everything and go out to visit, or re-visit, their buildings. And a sure indication of a good book that reproduces many architectural drawings is that you want to be able to pore over the originals… Read More
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