Design Hunting - Barbie's Late '70s Dream

“So much has been written about Barbie, but there hasn’t been a comprehensive analysis of the architecture and design created around her,” says Felix Burrichter, editor of the playfully intellectual magazine Pin-Up. But now there’s Barbie Dreamhouse: An Architectural Survey, a 152 page book which Burrichter, along with Whitney Mallet, and designer Ben Ganz, have produced with the blessing of Barbie’s bosses at Mattel. “Barbie’s a plastic icon of artifice and self-invention,” says Mallet.

As they note in the introduction, “It’s been 60 years since Barbie first had a room of her own, the original Dreamhouse hitting toy store shelves in 1962, only three years after the phenomenon that is Barbie was born…Since then, her homes have transformed and evolved, but Barbie’s independence has remained a constant throughout, her subjectivity performed through each era’s vision of aspirational architecture.”

Of course, some eras are groovier than others, so here we excerpt the grooviest: 1979 Dreamhouse.

Best,
Wendy Goodman

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