Detail from a design by Bernheimer Architecture, for the song “St. Ides, Parked Cars, and Other People’s Homes,” by Richmond Fontaine. Image: Bernheimer Architecture

Andrew Bernheimer, Director of the M.Arch program, and SCE architecture faculty member Bryan Young have contributed projects to Fairy Tale Architecture, and ongoing series curated by Bernheimer and his sister Kate,in which diverse architects explore the intimate relationship between the domestic structure of fairy tales and the imaginative realm of architecture.

Bernheimer Architecture’s contribution, St. Ides, Parked Cars, and Other People’s Homes, was inspired author and musician Willy Vlautin’s song of the same name. The song appears on the album Thirteen Cities, recorded by Vlautin’s band, Richmond Fontaine. Inspired in part by Charles and Ray Eames’ film, Powers of Ten, Bernheimer and his collaborator, SCE student Ariel Gonzalez-Millan (M.Arch ’16), “imagined a sequence of images that begin from a distance and zoom in until the particular home and its fictional inhabitant come into focus. Like Powers of Ten, the series examines scale, anonymity, individuality, pattern, and uniqueness amid the overwhelming generality of life.”

SCE architecture faculty member Bryan Young and Young Projects used Hans Christian Andersen’s enigmatic tale The Snow Queen to create their fairy tale architecture. Young, working with SCE student Cassandra Beaudry (M.Arch ’17), places the Snow Queen at the center of his image making, depicting her glittering gown, her castle, and her flight from her snowy home to warmer lands.

For more Fairy Tale Architecture, including projects by SCE faculty David Leven, Yolande Daniels, Astrid Lipka, and more, see Places Journal.