Peter Draper
Honorary Life Member of the College
Contact details
email: peterdraper@dumbflea.co.uk
Biographical details
Peter Draper is Visiting Professor in the History of Architecture, having been Lecturer in the History of Art Department from 1969 and Senior Lecturer from 1993 until his retirement in 2004. He was Honorary Editor of Architectural History, the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, 1985–1992 and served as President of the Society 2000-2004. He was chairman of the Fabric Advisory Committee at Southwark Cathedral from 1995 to 2008 and was a member of the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England from 2001- 2011. He served as President of the British Archaeological Association 2007-2010. In August 2011 he was appointed to the Commission of English Heritage as the commissioner with expertise in architectural history.
His publications on medieval architecture have concentrated on English ecclesiastical architecture, especially cathedrals, with a particular interest in the inter-relationship between architecture and liturgical practice. In recent years he has extended these interests to include Islamic architecture and the interactions and parallels between the western and Islamic traditions.
Publications
- His publications on medieval architecture have concentrated on English ecclesiastical architecture, especially cathedrals, with a particular interest in the inter-relationship between architecture and liturgical practice.
- In recent years he has extended these interests to include Islamic architecture and the interactions and parallels between the western and Islamic traditions.
Books
- The Formation of English Gothic: Architecture and Identity (Yale University Press, 2006) (awarded the Spiro Kostof Book Award 2008 and the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion in 2009).
- As editor, Reassessing Nikolaus Pevsner (Ashgate, 2004).
- As editor, with Virginia Raguin and Katherine Brush, Artistic Integration in Gothic Buildings (University of Toronto Press, 1995).
Recent articles
- 'Cell vaults in the architecture of Islam and the West', Z.Opacic & A.Timmerman eds, Architecture, Liturgy and Identity. Liber amicorum Paul Crossley, Studies in Gothic Art I (Brepols, 2011), pp. 315-322
- ‘The Late Twelfth-Century East End of Rochester Cathedral’, Medieval Art and Architecture at Rochester, T. Ayers and T. Tatton-Brown (eds) British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions XXVIII (2006) 97-113.
- ‘Islam and the West: the Early Use of the Pointed Arch Revisited’, Architectural History (2005) 48: 1-20.
- ‘Enclosures and Entrances in Medieval Cathedrals: Access and Security’, in The Medieval English Cathedral: Papers in Honour of Pamela Tudor-Craig, Harlaxton Medieval Studies (Donington, 2003) X: 76-88.
