Colorful modern architectural model with various sections in wood, red, yellow, blue, black, and gray, arranged on a light gray background.

INSIDE OUT HOUSE

A doll’s house for rain or shine that seeks to improve the playful lives of children of all abilities

FOR KIDS CHARITY ORGANISATION

Stacked colorful wooden blocks in various shapes and sizes.

The Cathedral Group (now U+I) asked 20 of the UK’s most exciting architects and designers to create a 21st century doll’s house for exhibition and auction at Bonhams in aid of disabled children’s charity KIDS. Each design was required to include at least one feature that makes life easier for a child with a disability.

The Inside Out House is an inclusive doll’s house for all children, whatever their needs and abilities. The house is conceived as two distinct elements. The first element is a concrete house with living bonsai tree and moss garden/herb garden, which sits outside. The second series of elements are individual oak rooms, hollowed out in bright colours that can be inserted into the concrete house.

When it is raining, children can play inside building different compositions with the oak rooms. On a sunny day, the children can play outside, inserting and balancing the oak rooms on/in the concrete house located in the garden. This is not a toy to be forgotten, but a playful and permanent sculptural form.

Diagram comparing a house with a garden to a house without a garden, highlighting the presence and absence of garden features.
Architectural model of a modern house made of concrete, wood, and colorful materials, with greenery, on a wooden pallet base.

TWO ELEMENTS

Inside Out House is comprised of a concrete house with a bonsai tree and a moss/herb garden, which is to be kept outdoors... and a series of individual oak rooms, hollowed out and painted in bright colours that live in the child's home, and are inserted into the concrete house when playing.

Miniature model of a house with concrete walls, a small tree, and a grassy front yard, placed on a wooden pallet.

“Beautifully made, robust, tactile and colourful, the Inside Out House is a piece that we can imagine a child getting years of play from … A great example of the classic modernist principle of bringing the outside in.”

- Review, The Telegraph

A girl sitting on the floor playing with wooden building blocks during a rainstorm outside, seen through a large glass window.
A young girl in a hoodie and jeans looking at a toy train on the floor inside a building with large floor-to-ceiling windows. Outside the window, there are trees and a partly cloudy sky.
A girl is lying on her stomach on the grass outside, looking at a small model house. The scene is viewed through a glass window, with trees and a hedge in the background. A toy train is on the floor inside the room.
Colorful wooden miniature model houses with staircases and open walls, set against a plain grey background.

LOCATION

Bonhams Charity Auction, London

RESEARCH THEMES

Accessiblity, carved sculpture, play

STATUS

Completed in 2013

CLIENT

KIDS charity organisation