The Barbie movie is coming to theatres soon and Barbie’s dream house already has a cult following.
Barbie fever is exploding with the imminent release of Greta Gerwig’s highly anticipated movie about the fashion doll that has made Mattel famous, but she’s more than that – she’s a genuine icon! What about Barbie’s house, do you remember it?
As we eagerly anticipate the theatrical release of Greta Gerwig’s live-action movie on 20 July, the excitement for “Barbie House fever!” has already taken hold. The movie, directed by the three-time Oscar-nominated director and starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken, is already generating a lot of buzz and sparking discussions in various media outlets worldwide.
Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is a feminist icon, a liberated and independent woman. After all, Barbie has had her own home since 1962, when women’s emancipation was still a long way off.
The plot opens with Mattel’s blonde doll being expelled from Barbieland, her all-pink world, to embark on a journey in the real world to seek true happiness.
Barbie’s Dreamhouse also plays an important role in the film, as it does in the Mattel universe. As a result, Architectural Digest also expressed interest in the live-action movie, prompting an email interview with director Greta Gerwig who gave readers a tour of the "Barbie Dreamhouse." Additionally, the magazine’s YouTube channel features Margot Robbie, who takes viewers on a virtual tour of the house.
The architecture of the Dreamhouse has obviously changed over time, and its evolution can now be appreciated in a book called "Barbie Dreamhouse. An Architectural Survey" by Felix Burrichter, Whitney Mallett and Ben Ganz. This limited-edition publication is poised to become a cult classic.
The book contains original drawings, plans and photos, as well as interviews with Architects, Designers and Artists. It delves into the evolution of fashion, costume, design and lifestyle through the lens of the “house”.
You can catch a sneak peek here!
Barbie’s house embraces an open architectural concept, with no walls and doors, inspired by the Modernist-style houses found in Palm Springs, California, but built on three storeys. To create the full-sized sets, Gerwig enlisted the skills of Sarah Greenwood and set decorator Katie Spencer, the same team who created the sets for visually striking films like “Pride and Prejudice.”
Barbie’s house is filled with tactile elements, glitz and glamour and, of course, the colour pink. How could it be any other way? It showcases iconic objects, stylish sofas, lavishly decorated and glossy details, and a wonderful swimming pool that Barbie and Ken can access by a slide. Everything was hand-painted to the point that so much pink paint was used for the sets that it led to an international shortage. This situation sparked much amusement, even with the director!
“The world ran out of pink” joked Greta Gerwig in the interview with Architectural Digest.
When designing the sets for Barbieland, Greenwood explained that “maintaining the childlike quality was paramount. I wanted the pinks to be very bright, and everything to be almost too much (...). Everything needed to be tactile because toys are, above all, things you touch.” “Authentic artificiality.”
AD Italia features another interesting article written by Marina P. Asins and Belén Afonso, where artificial intelligence is employed to imagine how the greats of architecture, such as Le Corbusier, Zaha Hadid and Lina Bo Bardi, would have approached the design of Barbie’s house.
The result of the operation carried out with the Stable Diffusion software is really interesting!
