HI BARBIE! - Envisioning Architecture of the Barbie World

The legendary Barbie doll, which was first introduced in 1959, has been the subject of much discussion this summer due to the release of a live-action film directed by Greta Gerwig and starring Margot Robbie as Barbie. For girls and women who have grown up with Barbie, they love her for her fashion and fantastic life which, all takes place in Barbie’s dreamhouse. Gerwig, who is an Oscar-nominated director for her other female-empowering films brings Barbie’s pink, plastic, and fantastic world to life in her new film. She takes a deep architectural dive into developing the Barbie Dreamhouse. Since the theoretical trailer release of the film, the Dreamhouse has gained astronomical recognition all over the world, and a real-life Barbie dreamhouse has been built for people to visit!

The Barbie Dreamhouse, which was first introduced in 1962, came three years after the launch of the Barbie doll by Ruth Handler. According to reporters Kai Ryssdal and Sarah Lesson from?MarketPlace, the dreamhouse was a “single-room, yellow-walled ranch home and it looks like a studio apartment.” However, the dreamhouse has evolved immensely over the past 60 years. The latest dreamhouse came out in 2021, and it has been upgraded to a life-size, three-story home that includes an elevator, pool, and slide. In the live-action film of 2023, Gerwig found inspiration in dollhouse toys to recreate in CONTEMPORARY STYLE with a lot of PINK.

On June 16, 2023, a video was released on YouTube featuring Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig giving an architectural digest of the Barbie dreamhouse in the film. The video begins with Robbie giving a tour of the Barbie Dreamhouse film set. She explains how there are no doors or windows within the home. In addition, the dream houses in Barbie Land are next to one another, so all the Barbies, including Robbie’s character, can see one another from their own bedrooms. Evidence of this is seen in the trailer which shows all the Barbies waving to one another saying, “Hi Barbie.” However, Robbie shared how her Barbie doesn’t “walk” downstairs to her pink car. No, instead she floats down to her pink car. The idea behind this melodramatic scene was to satirize how an actual Barbie doll doesn’t walk. Rather, she stands on her tiptoes.?

For the Dreamhouse, pink was the color, tone, and mood of Barbie’s world—naturally.?Gerwig discussed the importance of color, specifically pink, within the Barbie Dreamhouse. She mentioned how she incorporated multiple colors and shades of pink throughout the entire house. Gerwig and her team filled the house with plastic and artificial elements and themes of the 1950s in color and style.

To experience this in real life California has come up with something artistic to live about out of dreams of Barbie. On June 28th, 2023, Brain Boucher of?ArtNet?reported that there is a real-life Barbie Dreamhouse in Malibu, California, where, people can rent on Airbnb for a night. The real-life Barbie Dreamhouse has many features such as “a personal cinema, an infinity pool, an outdoor mediation zone, and a roller rink, against a panoramic backdrop of the Pacific Ocean.”?What makes the Malibu Dreamhouse different from the one in Gerwig’s film is there are rooms designed for both Barbie and Ken.?The Malibu house has Ken as a host and there’s a “masculine hand, even amid the sea of pink that is Barbie’s preferred hue!" The house is open to the public to rent and stay at.?