Is this exhibition about Playboy magazine an architecture and design exhibition? ”The Interior is the place where people are told essentially how to be.” – Mark Pimlott. The interiors have been seen for a long time with a supporting role in the definition of architecture. With exhibitions like "Playboy Architecture 1953-1979" begins to question the situation. Exhibition in collaboration with Princeton University about the way Playboy magazine used architecture and design as important tools to shape a new identity for the American male, in any case the modern man.

Playboy Architecture, 1953-1979 explores the crucial role of modern architecture— buildings, interiors, furniture, cities and product design—in constructing the Playboy imaginary. The exhibition shows how architecture was mobilized to shape a new sexual and consumer identity for the American male and how architectural taste became critical to success in the art of seduction. Through an extraordinary quantity of architecture and architects featured in Playboy, the magazine played an important role in informing the public, particularly American men, about design and architecture in relation to literature, politics, art, lifestyle and fashion. Looking at the changing nature of Playboy architecture not only provides a way of understanding how Playboy’s project changed from the mid 1950s to the late 1970s; it also reveals how Playboy’s idealized world became a reality that was ingrained into America’s national identity and had a massive global impact.

Playboy Architecture, 1953-1979 has been developed and curated by Professor Beatriz Colomina, Professor at Princeton University’s School of Architecture and Founding Director of the Program in Media and Modernity. In 2006-2007 she curated, with a group of Princeton Ph.D. students, the exhibition "Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X-197X" that was also published in METALOCUS in 2010 (see below).

Curatorial Team
Beatriz Colomina, Director, Ph.D. Program in Architecture, Princeton University --- Britt Eversole, Federica Vannucchi, Margo Handwerker, Ph.D. candidates, Princeton University School of Architecture -- with -- Pep Aviles, Marc Britz and Daria Ricchi, Ph.D. candidates, Princeton University School of Architecture

Playboy Research Team
Joseph Bedford, Britt Eversole, Daria Ricchi, Vanessa Grossman, Marc Britz, Daniela Fabricius, Margo Handwerker, Yetunde Oliaya, Federica Vannucchi, Pep Aviles, Enrique Ramirez and Molly Steenson

Design Team
Exhibition design: EventArchitectuur
Graphic design: Experimental Jetset

Playboy Architecture 1953-1979.

Venue: NAiM/Bureau Europa, Avenue Ceramique 226, Maastricht, Netherlands.

Dates: September 29 – February 10, 2013.

The Dutch architecture magazine Volume has published a special issue on Playboy Architecture, 1953-1979. This special is available as a handout for visitors of the exhibition. Below for more information about the Volume special.

METALOCUS-024 | José Juan Barba
published in:
M-024 | p. 4
Clip / Stamp / Fold. The Radical Architecture of “Little Magazines” 196X-197X. | Beatriz Colomina
published in:
M-024 | TA.01 | p. 133
 

 

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Beatriz Colomina is an internationally renowned architectural historian and theorist who has written extensively on questions of architecture and media. Ms. Colomina has taught in the School since 1988, and is the Founding Director of the Program in Media and Modernity at Princeton University, a graduate program that promotes the interdisciplinary study of forms of culture that came to prominence during the last century and looks at the interplay between culture and technology. In 2006-2007 she curated, with a group of Princeton Ph.D. students, the exhibition "Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X-197X" at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York and the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal. The exhibition continues to travel around the world, in the Museum of Design of Barcelona and the Colegio de Arquitectos de Murcia, at the NAI Maastricht and Santiago de Chile and Montevideo. Over 100 reviews and articles on the exhibition have been published worldwide. An exhibition catalog is forthcoming from ACTAR.

Her books include Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1994), which was awarded the 1995 International Book Award by the American Institute of Architects, has already been translated into many languages and is coming out in Spanish and in Turkish. In addition, Ms. Colomina has published Sexuality and Space (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992), which was awarded the 1993 International Book Award by the American Institute of Architects; and Architectureproduction (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1988). She has contributed to many volumes, including The Banham Lectures, Philip Johnson: The Constancy of Change, Beyond Transparency and catalogues of the work of Dan Graham, Muntadas and SANAA, among others. In addition she has published Cold War Hot Houses: Inventing Postwar Culture from Cockpit to Playboy, co-edited with AnnMarie Brennan and Jeannie Kim (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004; Doble exposición: Arquitectura a través del arte (Double Exposure: Architecture through Art) (Madrid: Akal, 2006), and Domesticity at War (Barcelona: ACTAR and MIT Press, 2007). She was selected to be a Juror for the 2010 Venice Biennale and a juror in the architectural competition for the new headquarters of CAF (Corporación Andina de Fomento), in Caracas, Venezuela. She presented "Women in Architecture," a keynote lecture in the conference Female Forces, 100 year anniversary, at the Royal Academy Copenhagen. In addition to being the Editor of the Multimedia Section of the JSAH (Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians) she has written numerous other publications and presented lectures throughout the world, including at MoMA, the MAXXI museum in Rome, the Guggenheim museum, DoCoMoMo in Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia, Chandigarh, Osaka, Tokyo, Florence, Oslo, Thesaloniki, Patras, Guadalajara, Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne, Ohio, Pamplona, Porto, Toronto, Houston, Texas AM, Yale, Chicago and Harvard University.

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Published on: November 6, 2012
Cite: "Playboy Architecture 1953-1979" METALOCUS. Accessed
<http://www.metalocus.es/en/news/playboy-architecture-1953-1979> ISSN 1139-6415
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