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How would an architect design houses from fairy tales? Let's find out: Fairy tale author and editor Kate Bernheimer and architect Andrew Bernheimer collaborated to take a look at houses and structures from fairy tales, as seen through the lens of architecture.
Take Rapunzel's tower, for instance, as it's designed by Guy Norden and Associates:
What are the key elements of your architectural design and how is it sited?
As structural engineers we were instantly drawn to the “tower that stood in a forest and had neither a door nor a stairway, but only a tiny little window at the very top” featured in the Brothers Grimm version of “Rapunzel,” and we looked to our previous design for the Seven Stems Broadcast Tower for inspiration. We were able to meet the Grimms’ strict design requirements by employing a slender tower design of vertical cylindrical stems that are joined by intermittent outrigger beams with a reinforced space at the very top for Rapunzel’s long captivity.
View more at Design Observer: Link | More in the series: Baba Yaga and Jack and the Beanstalk
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Watch as a an adorable two-year-old boy tells a story at NeatoBambino. He doesn’t pronounce words perfectly yet, but he’s got the emotions, the gestures, and the joy of storytelling down! Whatever you do, don’t miss the “fe-fi-fo-fum” part. Link
Comments Off This may look like the story of Little Red Riding Hood, but this girl is unlike any Red Riding Hood you’ve seen before. Would this concept make a good full-length film? There’s also a video on how the wolves were created. -Thanks, Patrick A. Prejusa!
Of all the trolls, the worst is the Choles-troll. He is the central character of this illustrated “bedtime story for adults” at The Museum Of Modern Fiction. Link -Thanks, josef lee!
You’ve heard the story of the Pied Piper, who lured away all the children of Hamelin because the town wouldn’t pay him for getting rid of the rats. There’s a real story behind the legend, and the town of Hamelin, Germany lives with the events of June 26th, 1284. Contemporary accounts are lost, but writings from the 14th century apparently reference early reports. What really happened to the children of Hamelin? Were they recruited for some crusade? Did they die of the plague? Did they just run away? Or could they have been victims of mass hysteria?
Another episode that shares features with the Pied Piper events took place in 1237 in the town of Erfurt, 271km south-east of Hamelin. A group of children marched in a dancing procession towards Arnstadt, 15km to the south, where they were said to have collapsed with exhaustion. Unlike the children of Hamelin, the Erfurt youngsters were rescued by their parents, who took them back to their homes. Still, some of them were said either to have died or remained afflicted with a permanent tremor.
The events at Erfurt are considered to be one of the first manifestations of the mediæval phenomenon known as the Dancing Mania (see FT:203:30–34), usually interpreted as a form of mass hysteria related to religious fervour. Dancing Mania was reportedly spread by “the sight of sufferers, like a demoniacal epidemic, over the whole of Germany and the neighbouring countries to the northwest”. [2] Those affected were described as unable to control their movements, or to stop their endless dance, and many were said to have died of exhaustion. As with Hamelin, we have an image of a crowd of children led away by music, perhaps to their deaths.
An article at Fortean Times lays out several possibilities for the disappearance of 130 children from Hamelin. Link
Alex posted the new world record for domino toppling not too long ago. I don’t think this one breaks any records, but it is quite original – it tells the story of Snow White in domino form.
