Walking, Floating, Creeping Houses

Howl's Moving Castle Miyazaki

Included in the definition of ‘home’ is the idea of a stable, secure structure… which doesn’t get up and move! The concept of home is especially important in children’s stories, which explains the popularity of the home-away-home structure: Child leaves home, has a little adventure, then returns to security. The young reader falls into slumber, undisturbed by nightmares.

Speaking of nightmares, loss of home base is an enduring theme. We can’t find our home; we return home to find it changed; people we love abandon us. Another creepy take: The home itself gets up and moves. This is the walking house.

LES DESSOUS DE LA VILLE (1985) Francis Masse  walking house
LES DESSOUS DE LA VILLE (1985) Francis Masse

Baba Yaga’s Walking House

This must be a very old nightmare because we see it in fairytales such as Baba Yaga, who lives in a house on chicken legs. A constant across fairytales: weird feet.

Harry Clarke illustration for 'The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault', first published  in this format in 1922, by George Harrap, London
Harry Clarke illustration of Bluebeard for ‘The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault’, first published in this format in 1922, by George Harrap, London

Why chicken legs? Well, why not. Humans have long lived with chickens and we’ve had ample time to notice their creepy-ass feet, more similar to human hands than, say, puppy dog paws, yet birds are more distantly removed in the evolutionary tree. Chicken feet are enough like human hands to lead us into uncanny valley.

Stanislav Kovalev - Finist Yasny Sokol
Stanislav Kovalev – Finist Yasny Sokol
Alberts Kronenbergs (18 Oct 1887-13 Sept 1958). Latvian writer and illustrator. This is from one of his rhymed books for children. Here, a young herd boy on his way home notices a little house on legs.
Alberts Kronenbergs (18 Oct 1887-13 Sept 1958). Latvian writer and illustrator. This is from one of his rhymed books for children. Here, a young herd boy on his way home notices a little house on legs.
Arkady Sher
Arkady Sher
Ivan Shishkin (1832 – 1898) Sandy Coastline, 1879. These naturalistic beach trees appear to have chicken feet.
Henrique Alvim Corrêa (1876 - 1910) Illustration for a 1906 edition of H.G. Wells's 1898 "The War of the Worlds"
Henrique Alvim Corrêa (1876 – 1910) Illustration for a 1906 edition of H.G. Wells’s 1898 “The War of the Worlds”
One of the oldest buildings in Hattfjelldal (a municipality in Nordland, Norway). Photo credit: Elin Kristina Jåma.
One of the oldest buildings in Hattfjelldal (a municipality in Nordland, Norway). Photo credit: Elin Kristina Jåma.
The Carnaval A Book Of Poems by Sef Roman Semenovich 1994 machine with legs
The Carnaval A Book Of Poems by Sef Roman Semenovich 1994. Due to the influence of Baba Yaga, walking houses are pretty common throughout Russian children’s literature.

Howl’s Moving Castle

A standout example of a modern walking house is Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, published 1986. Later, in 2004, Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki released a film adaptation.

Here is an excellent breakdown of main differences between the YA novel and Hayao Miyazaki’s film adaptation, from a feminist point of view. Though both Miyazaki and Wynne Jones are known to be feminist storytellers, the feminism of the Japanese man is quite different from that of the Welsh novelist.

One thing the film did do though, was to broaden the audience for the novel, which had until then remained relatively obscure.

Howl's Moving Castle three book covers

Magic and whimsy meet in this Howl’s Moving Castle for a new generation from the critically adored Sophie Anderson, author of The House with Chicken Legs.

Twelve-year-old Olia knows a thing or two about secrets. Her parents are the caretakers of Castle Mila, a soaring palace with golden domes, lush gardens, and countless room. Literally countless rooms. There are rooms that appear and disappear, and rooms that have been hiding themselves for centuries. The only person who can access them is Olia. She has a special bond with the castle, and it seems to trust her with its secrets.

But then a violent storm rolls in . . . a storm that skips over the village and surrounds the castle, threatening to tear it apart. While taking cover in a rarely-used room, Olia stumbles down a secret passage that leads to a part of Castle Mila she’s never seen before. A strange network of rooms that hide the secret to the castle’s past . . . and the truth about who’s trying to destroy it.

Archigrams

Go back to the 1960s and I wonder if Diana Wynne Jones might’ve been influenced by an architectural-art movement known as Archigram.

Archigram was an avant-garde architectural group formed in the 1960s ⁠that was neofuturistic, anti-heroic and pro-consumerist, drawing inspiration from technology in order to create a new reality that was solely expressed through hypothetical projects.

Wikipedia

In the 1960s they mounted an exhibition called Living City. Archigram wasn’t a green movement — these futuristic thinkers let their imaginations run completely wild, and imagined a future without material or carbon constraints.

The Walking City is constituted by intelligent buildings or robots that are in the form of giant, self-contained living pods that could roam the cities. The form derived from a combination of insect and machine and was a literal interpretation of le-Corbusier’s aphorism of a house as a machine for living in. The pods were independent, yet parasitic as they could ‘plug into’ way stations to exchange occupants or replenish resources. The citizen is therefore a serviced nomad not totally dissimilar from today’s executive cars. The context was perceived as a future ruined world in the aftermath of a nuclear war.

Wikipedia

De Wondere Reis Van Een Kerstboom (1942)

Strandbeest

Buildings with legs continue to fascinate.

For the last 27 years, Theo Jansen – a Dutch kinetic sculptor – has been creating new forms of life out of plastic pipes. His beach creatures, called ‘Strandbeest,’ get their energy from the wind. 

Mashable

A house legs is what photomontage photographer Scott Mutter might call a ‘surrational image’.

CONTEMPORARY FICTION SET IN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND (2023)

On paper, things look fine. Sam Dennon recently inherited significant wealth from his uncle. As a respected architect, Sam spends his days thinking about the family needs and rich lives of his clients. But privately? Even his enduring love of amateur astronomy is on the wane. Sam has built a sustainable-architecture display home for himself but hasn’t yet moved into it, preferring to sleep in his cocoon of a campervan. Although they never announced it publicly, Sam’s wife and business partner ended their marriage years ago due to lack of intimacy, leaving Sam with the sense he is irreparably broken.

Now his beloved uncle has died. An intensifying fear manifests as health anxiety, with night terrors from a half-remembered early childhood event. To assuage the loneliness, Sam embarks on a Personal Happiness Project:

1. Get a pet dog

2. Find a friend. Just one. Not too intense.

PAPERBACK

KINDLE EBOOK

MORE INFO

error: Content is protected