The Architect

The Architect, or sometimes the Creator, was the mysterious entity who oversaw the creation of the Strange and Wonderful House. Some accounts described the Architect as a “he”, but others as an “it”.

At some point, an individual gathered a group of creative people and showed them the as-yet-empty blueprints, infinite in size, for what would become the Strange and Wonderful House, and told them to put their imagination into creating as many distinctive, impossible rooms as possible. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: Welcome!)

The Architect personally gave Jenny Everywhere a wing all to herself, which became the Jenny Everywhere Museum. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Jenny Everywhere Museum)

One theory about the identity of the woman depicted in the Painting with her head turned towards a distant sunset over the sea, wearing a blue dress, was that she was once a woman beloved by the Architect. After she scorned his love, he drowned himself in the Tarn, cursing it; the woman then presumably became the Lady in Mourning. However, House historians believed this to be a fanciful legend, and that the curse of the Tarn predated the House. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Painting)

Sid, a mysterious man who once guided the Master of the House on a journey of self-rediscovery through the Gardens, described himself as “simply” being the incarnation of “the will of [his] Creator”. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Will of the Creator)

Some sources suggested that the Architect was still alive and active in the modern era of the House. According to one rumour, the Architect was the only entity known who could enter and exit the Empty Room at will, and liked to spend “its” afternoons there thinking up new rooms for the Infinite Wing and drawing up blueprints. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Empty Room)

Behind the scenes

Welcome! was written by Zxvasdf in his own name as the introduction to the Our Strange and Wonderful House writing challenge itself. However, metafictional elements in later entries which blurred the lines between the in-universe creators of the House and the real-life writers, as well as the cheekily partially in-universe tone of Welcome!, invite one to potentially consider it as a canonical part of the book's narrative. If so, its nameless first-person narrator is easily conflated with the figure of “the Architect”.