![]() ![]() “They’ve re-aligned, in a way, with a democratization of cultural criticism,” says Mallett, “Easter eggs in Taylor Swift music videos and Wassily chairs on TikTok.”īarbie may be pure fantasy. As homes, they are generally - apart from the slides - unremarkable, evoking the expensively anodyne architecture of clean lines and stainless steel appliances that serve as backdrop to influencer videos. As stages, the new Dreamhouses are on point. The latest wave of Barbie Dreamhouses, naturally, are informed by digital life, with flamboyant flourishes - such as slides - that are practically made for Instagram (and movie set pieces). It also marks the dawn of Reaganism and Thatcherism and its attendant surge of individualism. homes are increasingly designed by builders rather than architects, she adds, and the dawn of the Modern McMansion. “There’s a cultural bifurcation where the pop mainstream and avant-garde intelligentsia are aligned,” Mallett tells me via email, “and then they split.” The year marks a moment when U.S. Mallett sees 1979 as an important cultural dividing line - a period of oil shocks and stagflation. It’s a retrograde shift for independent Barbie, who goes from living in an urban townhouse to suburban single family homes - which may not designate a space for husband and child but certainly imply them. The whole vibe, write the authors, echoes Charles Moore’s 1970s Sea Ranch development in Sonoma.īut in the 1980s and ‘90s Barbitecture took a hard turn into the fairy tale, with Dreamhouses saturated in pink and designs evoking Victorian and Neoclassical manses of the late 19th century. A Dreamhouse released in 1979 was inspired by A-frame cabins, ditching the designated-use spaces in favor of something more flexible and open plan. Later houses would also draw from cutting-edge trends in architecture. There’s “an escapist impulse to wanting everything designed to be clean and beautiful, joyful and colorful, underneath it anxieties of nuclear annihilation.” In an essay published in “Barbie Dreamhouse,” architectural historian Beatriz Colomina notes that this first Barbie Dreamhouse was evocative of the Revell Toy House designed by Charles and Ray Eames in 1959. The first Barbie Dreamhouse could be the very aspirational apartment of a recent college grad. Pink is minimal - saved for accents such as a cushion and stool. In fact, it’s quite modest: A simple Modernist space, fabricated out of cardboard and contained in a box, it features bright yellow walls, a console TV and a blue easy chair. The first Barbie house, released in 1962, bears no relation to the pink and purple palaces sold now (or to the all-pink color palette of Barbie World in the film). This is a history that Mallett and Burrichter track in their fascinating book (which, unfortunately, is sold out - though the New York Times published a good piece in December that gathers some of the stellar photography by Evelyn Pustka). What’s intriguing to me are the ways in which the Barbie Dreamhouse has evolved - growing increasingly fantastical over the decades. (Like many an architectural chair, they looked really great but were completely impractical Barbie constantly keeled over when placed on them.) As design writers Whitney Mallett and Felix Burrichter noted in their 2022 book, “ Barbie Dreamhouse: An Architectural Survey,” the miniature furnishing fused elements of Marcel Breuer’s “Cesca” chair with Verner Panton’s more space-age Panton chair, from 1959, an all plastic-chair that employed a cantilever design. Particularly noteworthy were the chairs, which were made from a single piece of bent plastic. And the painted-on interiors offered a crafty vibe: gingham wallpaper, Tiffany lamps and laminate furnishings in earthy tones. The three-story home, which came with a “working” elevator (you pulled a string), evoked a certain sense of urbanity. ![]() Naturally, all of this has gotten me thinking about Barbie Dreamhouses.Īs a kid in the late ‘70s and ‘80s, I was the owner of one such house: the Barbie Townhouse, which was introduced by Mattel in 1974. ![]()
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