The Shatwell Project

Shatwell is small collection of buildings around a farmyard. The site is physically and metaphorically home to Drawing Matter. The archive contains the drawings and models: the building/landscape project is like a species of one-to-one drawing that has somehow escaped the confines of its cabinet. Some of the ideas, inspirations, ongoing projects and dead ends, events and visitors that make up the Shatwell project are collected here.

The Shatwell project is the independent child of the Hadspen estate. The parabola garden belonging to the Hadspen estate lies in the distance, and in the past. Famously a flower garden, it also marked the beginning of a romantic valley walk down to Shatwell Farm and rural life. Today the scenario is foreshortened and works in reverse: the approach to Shatwell is through the farmyard and ends with a view up the valley. The area in between presents a new scene, tantalisingly urban in character.

Its design comprises multiple transformations authored by many hands, essentially through a process of intensive estate management. But to what end? How is a new bargain being struck between cowsheds and cabinets of curiosities?

Buildings

Writing

The following texts respond to the drawings collection and the architecture and site of Shatwell Farm. Some are by individual visitors, others record collaborative research.