House on Chicken Feet, Part 2

Jack and the Beanstalk, architectural design

Jack's Beanstalk. [Design by Leven Betts with Bret Quagliara]

Fairy tales have transfixed readers for thousands of years, and for many reasons; one of the most compelling is the promise of a magical home. How many architects, young and old, have been inspired by the hero or heroine, banished from the cottage, lost in the woods, who risks everything to find a forever-space?

In this series, which appears in three installments this week on Places, we look at fairy tales through the lens of architecture. Participating firms — Bernheimer Architecture, Leven Betts and Guy Nordenson and Associates — have selected favorite tales and produced works exploring the intimate relationship between the domestic structures of fairy tales and the imaginative realm of architecture.

Houses in fairy tales are never just houses; they always contain secrets and dreams. This project presents a new path of inquiry, a new line of flight into architecture as a fantastic, literary realm of becoming. We welcome you to these fairy-tale places.

— Kate Bernheimer & Andrew Bernheimer

PLAY SLIDESHOW Play

Jack and the Beanstalk

In this familiar story, a poor mother sends her son to town with a cow to sell, and he trades the cow for magic beans. His mother becomes angry when he returns home and throws the beans out the window. Even the youngest reader understands that she is very tired and hungry and desperate to care for her son. She is not a bad person; this is not a story about a bad mother. It is the story of a hero climbing a beanstalk: a huge beanstalk that grows overnight from the magic beans.

He climbs and climbs, sometimes through the clouds, until he reaches a rich giant’s house. Of course, it is no safe haven. There is treachery and madness about. The boy escapes narrow death more than once, with help from the giant’s wife and, in some versions, a sleeping cat or a teakettle. All forces come out to protect this boy and his desperate mother.

Perhaps most commonly associated with this story is its delicious refrain:

Fee-fi-fo-fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman.
Be he ‘live, or be he dead,
I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.

This song can be seen as a twist on the household game in which a child is gleefully chased by a grown-up who teases, “I’ll eat you up!”

In some variants of the tale, Jack actually kills the giant; in the cleaned-up versions, he escapes as the giant snores deeply and contentedly. Often he must escape three times before returning home to great wealth.

The vehicle for all the magic in this story — its adventure and triumph — is the beanstalk. It leads up to the sky, where we find the giant’s house. The beanstalk is rarely described; such a great and powerful structure needs no description. Fairy tales are exemplified by spare and abstract detail, leaving enormous space — big as the sky — for the reader to wonder.

What comes of Jack’s magical beanstalk? Usually, at the end, it’s cut down.

— Kate Bernheimer

Three Questions for Leven Betts Architects

How did you settle on the most important space of the fairy tale?

We were interested in the beanstalk itself — the place between the ground where Jack and his mother live and the sky where the Giant lives.

When you were a child, was there any structure you encountered that reminded you of a fairy tale then, or does now? Can you describe it?

Not really, though giant trees are very magical.

What are the key elements of your architectural design and how is it sited?

We chose to think of the beanstalk as an infrastructural network between Jack’s world and the Giant’s world. Jack and the Giant are both plundering from each other and the beanstalk is the inhabited highway between them, with different environments and ecosystems. We also thought of the beanstalk as both natural and machined.

Editors’ Note

For more architectural fairy tales on Places, see designs for “Baba Yaga,” by Bernheimer Architecture; “Rapunzel,” by Guy Nordenson and Associates; “The Boy Who Set Forth to Learn What Fear Was,” by Bernheimer Architecture; “Snowflake,” by Abruzzo Bodziak; “The Little Match Girl,” by Bernheimer Architecture; and “Monkey King,” by Solid Objectives – Idenburg Liu.

See also “Writ Small,” by Naomi Stead, on architects, architecture and the idea of home in children’s books.

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ABOUT THE SLIDESHOW

A design for Jack's beanstalk, by Leven Betts with Bret Quagliara.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kate Bernheimer is a fairy-tale author and editor. She teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
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Andrew Bernheimer is the principal of Bernheimer Architecture. He teaches at Parsons The New School for Design.
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Leven Betts is an architecture practice in New York City founded by David Leven and Stella Betts, who are on the faculty at Parsons the New School for Design.
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DESIGN OBSERVER JOBS

MORE ON Fairy Tale Architecture

Fairy Tale Architecture: Monkey King
On Places, a design by Solid Objectives – Idenburg Liu (SO – IL) for the Chinese fairy tale “Monkey King.”

Fairy Tale Architecture: The Little Match Girl
On Places, a design by Bernheimer Architecture for the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale “The Little Match Girl.”

Fairy Tale Architecture: Snowflake
On Places, a design by Abruzzo Bodziak for the Russian fairy tale “Snowflake.”

Fairy Tale Architecture: The Halloween Edition
On Places, a design by Bernheimer Architecture for the Brothers Grimm fairy tale “The Boy Who Set Forth to Learn What Fear Was.”

House on Chicken Feet, Part 3
On Places, in the third of three architectural fairy tales, Guy Nordenson and Associates re-engineer the tower in "Rapunzel."

House on Chicken Feet, Part 1
On Places, the first of three "architectural fairy tales" that explore magical homes; part one, by New York architect Andrew Bernheimer, reimagines the hut of the Russian witch Baba Yaga.

MORE BY Kate Bernheimer

12.19.12: Fairy Tale Architecture: Monkey King
12.18.12: Fairy Tale Architecture: The Little Match Girl
12.17.12: Fairy Tale Architecture: Snowflake
10.31.12: Fairy Tale Architecture: The Halloween Edition
12.22.11: House on Chicken Feet, Part 3
12.20.11: House on Chicken Feet, Part 1
More by Kate Bernheimer >>

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On Places, Naomi Stead examines the cultural perception of architecture as not simply a creative profession but also a kind of child's play — an uber-kindergarten legitimated for academic credit and professional reputation.

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On Places, Shannon Mattern visits Paju Bookcity in South Korea— a special economic zone dedicated to books —and high-style architecture — now being remade for the digital era.

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Gallery: Kate Bernheimer, Andrew Bernheimer & Leven Betts with Bret Quagliara