ARCHITECTURALLY DESIGNED DOLL HOUSES

This exhibit includes a representative sampling of the best doll houses entered in the 1982 doll house competition, sponsored by Architectural Digest attracted 260 entries, all designed by architects from countries with strong doll house traditions. All of the display items were among the 62 finalists chosen by architectural historians Vincent Scully of the United States and Bruno Zevi of Italy.

Many types of design are represented in this collection and each of the selections demonstrates the ways in which the imagination can be utilized to transform a quotidian structure into something veritably magical. Not since Sir Edwin Lutyen designed a doll house for Queen Mary in 1921 have such painstaking efforts gone into the construction of dwellings that were not intended for human habitation.

Inclusions range from the whimsical House of Cards, literally made of playing cards, scotch tape and rubber bands, by Russian architects Yuri Avuackumov and Sergey Podyomstchikov, to the "Nirvana of Spaces" inspired by a Zen philosophy and designed by Kum-Chew Lye and Jerzy and Maria Wojtowicz of Japan.

Controversial political statements by Kong of Chile are expressed in his four quadrant dwelling that portrays the gradual destruction of the environment, problems in landscape, general chaos and recovery of urban space. Markedly different from Kong's creation is Theo Crosby's one bedroom castle from England that is accompanied by the dictum "Richly decorate it like a jewel box."