The dollhouse – from fairy tales to reality

This is no fiction or virtual creation, but a human-sized dollhouse raised on the ground. Built by a contemporary artists as an architecture project, the dollhouse looks like a jewel against the rural backdrop of the Essex County in England. It can be rented, but only if you win a lottery specially set up for this. Otherwise, admiring it from the outside should suffice.

The design is bizarre, but very appealing, while forms and colors were carefully picked to transpose the beholder into a fairy tales world. With four stacking sections, the house looks like it could collapse and expand at the same, accordion-style, and leaves the impressions of an incessant move.

The contemporary artists who crafted it, Grayson Perry, says he meant to evoke a wayside and rural chapels when designing it. The house does not attempt to mimic the appearance or materials of existing buildings in the local village of Wrabness. Instead, he says, it offers a unique addition to them. All its materials and forms were picked to integrate the building in the surrounding environment. For example, hand-made tiles relate tonally to the landscape while the building’s simple pitched roof forms echo simple agricultural buildings and farmhouses.

The four stacking sections basically follow the terrain. A series of simple, house forms step up in scale from the entrance to the main living room space. The building gets higher as it steps down the hill with the tallest volume at the lowest point. It therefore presents two different faces, a modestly scaled entrance porch to the south and a taller more formal frontage to the north.

The highest section incorporates a double-height living room lined with tapestries and wood paneling while the previous section has two bedrooms. Due to the stacking appearance, the two bedrooms have balconies that look into the living room while those in the bathroom can keep an eye on visitors in the hallway.

The interior of the dollhouse features a number of specially commissioned art works by Grayson Perry including beautiful tapestries, pots, decorative timber-work and mosaic floors, celebrating the history and traditions of Essex. A motorcycle chandelier hangs in the living room.

Sources: Huffington Post, Living-architecture.co.uk