Overview
Since our founding in 1985, Butler Armsden has carefully assembled a varied portfolio of primarily residential work. Each project conveys the uniqueness that comes from an architecture which shares our client’s vision.
We believe each project is created for an individual on a single site in a single time, and that the solution is specific to that partnership. We bring a variety of methods into the process including renderings, models, virtual reality and reams of sketches. We truly enjoy the process of working with others to come up with the best answer to a design challenge, and greatly value the collaborations with our clients.
Our firm is based in San Francisco, and most of our work is in the City or in the surrounding Bay Area counties. We find ourselves engaging with art, culture, technology and nature with virtually every project. We always seek to learn from the wonderful California landscape that provides such a fertile basis for design, but equally value the rapidly changing aspects of the state, where never ending streams of new ideas challenge us daily.
Approach
Butler Armsden’s projects emerge from a deep partnership with our clients and the interplay between our vision and theirs. For every project, we develop a shared architectural language through our work as a team. Each Butler Armsden team member brings their own approach, skills, and style to the work. In search of harmony, we come together to coalesce ideas into a singular vision for each project. A crucial part of this process, our leadership team leans on their many decades of experience in architecture, and at BAA, to guide our firm and our work.
Underlying all of this is one essential factor: a passion for what we do. This passion makes us focus on every single detail, from a door hinge picked out three months before construction to the flatware on the table come move-in day. Through these details, the essence of a project emerges, and a personal relationship with the space starts to form. Our work is in finding that essence and bringing it to bear in architectural form.
Team
Team
In Memory of Lewis W. Butler
Founder
Lewis Butler founded Butler Armsden Architects in 1985 and led the firm for 35 successful years. He loved his work so much that he was frequently heard proclaiming, “I’m never going to retire!” He wouldn’t have the chance to, as esophageal cancer stole his “golden years” in September of 2020.