'Like a dream' Basquiat, Dali and Haring's theme park rides again

Five years ago, the creative director Michael Goldberg was working from home when he spotted a reference to Luna Luna on an obscure website. "I may have yelled on my couch," he says. Goldberg had chanced upon the lost world of Luna Luna, an avant-garde "theme park" staged in Hamburg in 1987, created by the artist Andre Heller, which featured surreal and playful rides designed by the great and the good of the art world.

- Lauren Cochrane

Five years ago, the creative director Michael Goldberg was working from home when he spotted a reference to Luna Luna on an obscure website. "I may have yelled on my couch," he says. Goldberg had chanced upon the lost world of Luna Luna, an avant-garde "theme park" staged in Hamburg in 1987, created by the artist Andre Heller, which featured surreal and playful rides designed by the great and the good of the art world. It included a Ferris wheel by Jean-Michel Basquiat, a carousel by Keith Haring, a swing ride by their fellow 80s New York name Kenny Scharf, a funhouse by Salvador Dali, a glass maze by Roy Lichtenstein and an entranceway by the abstract art pioneer Sonia Delaunay, to name a few.

Goldberg couldn't believe he was only just discovering Luna Luna. "I started calling people that I knew and respected in art, asking them if they had heard of it, and four people in a row told me no," he says. As someone steeped in pop culture, who had worked with brands including Nike and Beats By Dre, he immediately saw the wonder of the project, and the commercial opportunity in reviving the idea: "I felt that Luna Luna was this incredible spectacle that had integrity... If you put writers in a room, I don't think they could come up with a more remarkable story. You have this incredible character Andre, pulling off a miracle, and letting it slip out of his hands.