Even the smallest architectural design proposes to make an intervention in the known world, it dares to change things as they are, and to venture how they might be. It envisions a possible future, sometimes a fantastic one, and then sets out to make it manifest. If that’s not a rich subject for children’s books, I don’t know what is. But such books should also make us question what we want architecture and architects to be. Not just in fairy tales, but in real life. — Places Journal
For generations children's books have told fanciful stories about the creation of houses and the comforts of domesticity. "When you go looking," writes Naomi Stead on Places, "you realize that there is a huge, even dominant genre in children’s literature: stories about houses, about the choice of a house, the quality of homeliness, and the very concept of home." Stead surveys the scene, from Iggy Peck to Roberto, from The Little House to House by Mouse, and wonders what these books tell us "about the architecture profession and how it is conceived and represented in culture more broadly."
In related features, Places continues an ongoing series on fairy tale architecture, with new designs by Abruzzo Bodziak ("Snowflake"), Bernheimer Architecture ("The Little Match Girl"), and Solid Objectives – Idenburg Liu (SO – IL) ("Monkey King").
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