Bruno Taut's The Fairy Palace is an extraordinary architectural toy for children. In addition to being an architect, the German Taut (1880-1938) was also an urban planner and writer. He had a completely different view of his field than contemporaries such as Le Corbusier or Van der Rohe. For example, he was a strong believer in the use of color. Indeed, by giving homes all their own color, they were baptized as individuals, while they were also clearly part of a single whole. In addition, he enjoyed working with the materials crystal and glass, because they were of great symbolic value in his eyes. Crystal stood for a connection between the man-made and the natural. Glass represented the bond between the spiritual and the human being.

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The Fairy Palace

These ideas are also reflected in the toys that Taut designed in 1919. Taut started designing toys out of necessity, as there was a serious shortage of materials and inactivity in the construction industry after the First World War. For example, he designed the Dandanah — The Fairy Palace; colored glass blocks that children could use to create fantasy buildings. The colors were meant to awaken their imagination and artistic intuition. The simple shapes could be reconfigured endlessly. The set of blocks came with six coloured blades that showed a variety of assemblies. The toy epitomises Taut's utopian view of the role that architecture can play in shaping a new society.

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Taut was a convinced pacifist and had to flee from the rising Nazism in 1930. First to Switzerland, then to Japan and finally he ended up in Turkey. There, at the age of 58, he died of asthma, from which he suffered for years. He became the first and so far only European and non-Muslim to be buried in Istanbul's Edirnekapi Cemetery.