Architect/Interior Designer: Slade Architecture
Location: Shanghai, China
Client: Mattel
Architect of Record (company name): AD Incorporated (China) Ltd (Danial McCahon)
Store Concept Development and Creative Direction: BIG/ Ogilvy & Mather
Activities (Fashion Runway and Barbie Design Center Activities): Chute Gerdeman
Retail Consultant: Vertical Retail Consulting (Formerly KSA Shanghai)
Restaurant Consultant: David Laris, Founder. David Laris Creates
Graphics: BIG/ Ogilvy & Mather (façade frit pattern)
MEP Engineer (company name): Scott Wilson LTD
Structural Engineer (company name): Scott Wilson LTD
Lighting consultant (company name): Radiance Lightworks
General Contractor (company name): EDG
Furniture Fabricator: Strads Design Co, LTD
Fixtures vendor/fabricator: Kingsmen
Woodwork (company name): EDG
Façade Supplier/Installer: King Glass Engineering Co, LTD
Construction area: 2,790 sqm
Completion: 2009

After our previous post about the cooperation between Barbie and Kartell, and aware of the fact that you can never get enough of the legendary doll, Yatzer presents you this all-new and super modern Barbie shelter in Shanghai. Pretty in pink indeed, it’s the first Barbie flagship store in the world and is a successful interpretation of all that the famous doll stands for. Slade architects have done their best to create a proper home for the largest collection of Barbie dolls and merchandising in the whole world. But they did not stop there. The 35,000 square foot store includes a beautiful restaurant and gelato bar on the top floor as well as the Barbie Design Center, where girls can design their own versions of the doll.

Slade architects- that led the design including the exterior, interior, fixtures, and furnishings- point out that for the new facade they combined references to product packaging, decorative arts, fashion and architectural iconography to create a modern identity for the store, expressing Barbie’s cutting-edge fashion sense and history.
The facade is made of two layers: molded, translucent polycarbonate interior panels and flat exterior glass panels printed with a whimsical lattice frit pattern. Slade collaborated with designers at BIG, who created the final exterior frit graphics. The two layers reinforce each other visually and interact dynamically through reflection, shadow and distortion.
Visitors are enveloped by curvaceous, pearlescent surfaces of the lobby, leading to a pink escalator tube that takes them from the bustle of the street, to the double-height main floor.

The central feature is a three-story spiral staircase enclosed by eight hundred Barbie dolls. The staircase and the dolls are the core of the store; everything literally revolves around Barbie. The staircase links the three retail floors: the women’s floor (women’s fashion, couture, cosmetics and accessories), the doll floor (dolls, designer doll gallery, doll accessories, books) and the girls floor (girls’ fashion, shoes and accessories). Throughout the retail areas, Slade played with the scale differences between dolls, girls and women. As they explain, they wanted to reinforce the feeling of youth and the possibilities of an unapologetically girlish outlook (regardless of age) by mixing reality and fantasy and keeping play and fun at the forefront - to create a space where optimism and possibility reign supreme as expressions of core Barbie attributes. And judging by what we see, they certainly achieved all of their goals!