It’s a bit of a cliché to say that a location is its own character in a film or television series, but sometimes, it’s true. That is absolutely the case for Keyhouse in the beloved comic book series, Locke & Key, which had real-life inspiration.
Keyhouse is the ancestral home of the Locke family. Locke & Key follows the Tyler, Kinsey, and Bode Locke dealing with their grief after their father’s murder. Their mom moves them back to their father’s ancestral home, Keyhouse, as a fresh start for the family. As they get settled, the siblings begin to discover a series of mysterious keys with magical powers hidden all over the house.
With the recent Netflix adaptation of Locke & Key, Keyhouse has come to life in a whole new way. Old and new fans of Locke & Key alike get to see how the design of Keyhouse and the magic of the keys are so closely connected. In honor of the first season of the Netflix adaptation of Locke & Key dropping, the comic book artist, Gabriel Rodriguez, shared his inspiration for the design of Keyhouse.
The Inspiration Behind Locke & Key’s Keyhouse
Keyhouse is perhaps the most important aspect of the Locke & Key universe, as it’s source of the magic that the Locke family encounters. Because of that, its design needed to be both livable and unique. Thankfully, Rodriguez happens to be an architect by training.
In order to achieve the vibe he was going for, Rodriguez decided to make Keyhouse as uneven and asymmetrical as possible. As he told CBR, he considers Locke & Key to be “a compelling story [with] grounded elements of the story that are rooted in reality.” Fantasy contradicts a grounded story, and an unsymmetrical house contradicts a livable home. Once he nailed down that vision, Rodriguez treated it as a real architecture project. He drafted up actual blueprints to ensure he and author Joe Hill would have highly detailed locations for actions scenes in Keyhouse.
Naturally, some elements of Rodriguez’s original design for Keyhouse had to be let go for the logistics of a television adaptation. Co-showrunner Carlton Cuse respected that the Lockes’ home was a vital part of the story and its unique design was inherent to creating Keyhouse. He focused on creating a functional layout so that the camera could seamlessly follow actors from room to room. But at the same time, the Keyhouse seen in the Netflix adaptation of Locke & Key is full of intricate details. True to Rodriguez’s original vision, Cuse says that Keyhouse’s detailed design will pay off further down the road.
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