V&A Museum of Childhood gives Rachel Whiteread's dolls house village a home

With no onward chain and complete with period features highlighted by an award-winning artist, these homes would have estate agents licking their lips but for one small problem — none of them are above one metre high.

About 150 dolls houses, collected over more than 20 years by Turner Prize-winner Rachel Whiteread, have been stripped of their inhabitants and furniture but come with curtains, carpets and in some cases art on the walls.

They range from Georgian mansions to terraces and Tudor cottages and will take up about 50 square metres in the V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green when they are all in place.

Whiteread, who won the Turner Prize in 1993 with House, a life-sized replica of the interior of a condemned terraced house in east London, collected the dolls houses from second-hand shops and online auctions.

The complete work, known as Place (Village), will be lit from within and sit on stepped platforms creating the impression of a hillside community.

Whiteread said: “I am pleased that Place has found a permanent home in Bethnal Green, as I have lived and worked in east London for many years and know the Museum of Childhood well. I started collecting dolls houses when I first left college. This work connects to my earlier work because these houses have no people in them and there is no furniture.

“I was interested in the interiors of these houses and also the fact that they had been through many generations of family. They may have been made by the father. There was a lot of love involved with them and then eventually the love was lost. They were transferred through generations. That transaction is always something that’s been in my work.”

The museum already has about 100 dolls houses, including 20 on show, with the earliest from 1673.