It’s a Barbie world: new guide charts the evolution of the Barbie Dreamhouse

The Barbie Dreamhouse, America’s most adored dollhouse, is now celebrated with a definitive tome. In celebration of the home’s sixtieth anniversary, Mattel Creations and the architectural journal Pin-Up have come collectively to launch a 152-page hardcover design guide that comprehensively charts the fantasy dwelling’s evolution, from its first look in 1962 to its newest iteration in 2021. Crammed with architectural drawings, authentic images by Evelyn Pustka and a group of essays and interviews with teachers and designers, akin to Kelly Wearstler, Rafael de Cardenas, the DJ/producer Honey Dijon and curator Alexandra Cunningham, the guide is as reliable an architectural examine as that of every other iconic dwelling.

Barbie Dreamhouse, the definitive guide

Written and edited by Pin-Up founder Felix Burrichter and author/model semiotician Whitney Mallett, Barbie Dreamhouse: An Architectural Survey celebrates Barbie’s boundary-pushing enchantment that has transcended the worlds of style, design, type, tradition and anthropology. 

The Dreamhouse is acknowledged as a mannequin for structure all through the course of its existence, all the time pushing the benchmark of risk that Barbie herself has lengthy impressed. Breaking with conventional dollhouse conventions since its inception, the Dollhouse design has reiterated Barbie’s independence in every model, whereas reflecting the approach to life tendencies of the occasions. From a midcentury trendy bungalow to a fantastic, all-pink townhouse within the Nineties after which the equally exuberant enjoyable tower, whose elevator now notably suits a wheelchair and is plastered with scenographies that may be as excellent for a Zoom background as they’re for recording TikTok movies, the home continues to precisely sum up modern design and home beliefs. As fantastical as it could seem, it really is a Barbie world and we’re simply residing in a fraction of it.

‘Pin-Up’s Barbie Dreamhouse guide explores the machinations of our collective home fantasies by means of the combination of architectural historical past and widespread tradition,’ say Burrichter and Mallett. ‘Because the first Dreamhouse in 1962, Barbie’s properties have reworked and advanced, richly quoting Twentieth- and early Twenty first-century structure and design historical past. Our guide paperwork the influence Barbie has had on the worldwide architectural creativeness.’

Ben Ganz, the Swiss artwork director who designed the guide, provides, ‘We designed the guide like a correct structure monograph, with constant images and detailed drawings. We needed to show the breadth of architectural kinds in a really dynamic {and professional} approach, to create the last word taxonomy of the Barbie Dreamhouse.’