The new Pavilions of Wonder exhibit launched yesterday (12 September) as part of this year’s London Design Festival, featuring three structures inspired by Barbie and the landscapes and midcentury modernist architecture of Greater Palm Springs.
At the unveiling of the Pavilions, Colleen Pace, chief sales and marketing officer for Visit Greater Palm Springs, said: “They really have exceeded my expectations. We’re hoping it has a tremendous impact on people walking by, and hope it will create a lot of whimsical inspiration for people to visit Greater Palm Springs.
“Visitors can discover more about us, by viewing some of the architecture and landscapes, and learning what inspired this installation. We love that we’re able to bring a piece of Greater Palm Springs to London and we’d love agents and their clients to come and experience it for themselves.”
Located at Strand Aldwych in front of Somerset House until 22 September, the Pavilions of Wonder are free to visit and open 24 hours a day. The Visit Greater Palm Springs team will be on site this weekend (14-15 September) meeting with visitors. “We’ll be getting them excited to visit our beautiful destination, where the sun shines for 300 days a year,” Pace added.
The London Design Festival’s director Ben Evans expects 100,000 people to walk past the structures over the next 10 days, and said: “It’s very difficult not to stop and look, and for me that’s a successful project, as we want to tell a story to a wider audience, and I think it will generate a wider profile [for Greater Palm Springs].”
Barbie and Greater Palm Springs have a long-standing history. The first Barbie Dreamhouse launched in 1962 as a fold-out house – complete with miniature record albums and colourful furniture – and was based on a home in Greater Palm Springs. Dreamhouses have continued to reference the destination’s signature architectural styles and desert landscapes, which inspired the set and bright pink Dreamhouses that featured in last year’s hit Barbie movie.
Pace explained: “Our core values align with Barbie, with empowering women and showing that Greater Palm Springs is a destination that welcomes everyone. We are very inclusive and very well known for LGBTQ+ and we’re becoming very accessible, and so that’s something that’s very important to us, and something we wanted to convey via this partnership.”
The Pavilions of Wonder were created by the founder of Studiomama and designer Nina Tolstrup, who visited Greater Palm Springs earlier this year to gain inspiration. Speaking to TTG at the launch of the exhibit, she said: “A visit to Greater Palm Spring really is a pilgrimage if you are interested in design and architecture. It’s the capital of midcentury architecture in the world. I hope this will inspire people to visit, as it’s playful and a surprise, so people will be curious and want to discover more.”
All the pavilions reference specific styles of architecture seen across Greater Palm Springs. In the Design Stories pavilion, a curved structure features eight “peepholes”, each showing Barbies in various mountain and desert landscapes. The Playful Pauses pavilion is inspired by Albert Frey’s iconic Palm Springs City Hall – with its geometric grid design and overhanging sloping roof – as well as the 2023 Barbie Dreamhouse. While the Infinity Garden pavilion references the destination’s desert landscape, with pink seating areas surrounded by cacti and palms reflected in mirror-lined walls.
This is the 22nd year the London Design Festival has run, and it features a range of projects across the capital. Last year it received 565,000 visitors across all exhibits during the nine-day event.
Read more: Visit Greater Palm Springs’ Colleen Pace describes how the project was developed
