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Mattel’s Architect Barbie, icon of the building trades, is ready for launch.
BUFFALO, N.Y.
There’s a new architect in town and she’s not afraid of the colour pink.
Mattel’s Architect Barbie, icon of the building trades, is ready for launch. Eleven-and-half inches tall in her trendy ankle boots and carrying a hard hat and pink drawing tube, the doll channels “Barbie’s rebellious side,” according to a University at Buffalo (UB) architecture professor who helped bring her to the public stage. And Barbie is already generating talk among practicing architects about the role of women in the field.
The 127th doll in Mattel’s “Barbie I Can Be” series was a long time coming. Since 2002, when Architect Barbie won Mattel’s competition for Barbie’s next career, Despina Stratigakos, UB professor of architecture and visual studies, had hoped the doll would be produced, but it never showed up on store shelves.
Mattel was looking to highlight careers where women are underrepresented and “architect” seemed to be the right fit for the 2011 “I Can Be” doll line.
Stratigakos teamed up with her colleague, architect Kelly Hayes McAlonie, interim director of UB’s Capital Planning Group, to encourage creation of the doll.
The doll was expected to be introduced at the American Institute of Architects (AIA) national convention in New Orleans this month and will be on store shelves in August.
Stratigakos is internationally recognized for her research on women in architecture.
Hayes McAlonie, president-elect for AIA New York State, began her career designing learning environments for children and later founded the AIA Western New York Architecture and Education Program, through which architects introduce schoolchildren to the world of design.
“We hope Architect Barbie not only introduces young girls to the profession,” says Stratigakos, “but that these girls shake things up once they get there. Although women comprise 40 per cent of the students in architectural degree programs, they struggle to enter and remain in practice.”
DCN News Services
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