What is the connection between sex, architecture and design? Opening tomorrow, September 29, Playboy Architecture, 1953-1979 explores the role of architecture in the famous men’s magazine Playboy. Colomina, along with the curators of NAiM/Bureau-Europa in Maastricht, The Netherlands, centers the exhibition around the research of Beatriz Colomina, a professor at the Princeton University School of Architecture and founder of their Media and Modernity program, who has been studying the connection for the past three years.
Playboy Architecture, 1953-1979 illustrates how cities, buildings, interiors, furniture and products have always played an important role in the fantasy world of Playboy. Ever since Hugh Hefner launched Playboy in 1952, its erotic spreads have featured the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, Buckminster Fuller, Moshe Safdie, and Paolo Soleri. As Colomina’s program argues, “sexual revolution and architectural revolution are inseparable.” The exhibition reveals how Playboy reshaped masculinity with the influence of architecture and design.
Exhibition: Playboy Architecture, 1953-1979 Dates: September 29th – February 10, 2013 Venue: NAiM; Maastricht, The Netherlands More information here!
About Beatriz Colomina :
Beatriz Colomina is an architecture historian at the School of Architecture and founder of the Media and Modernity program at Princeton University. She is the author of several books, among which ‘Sexuality and Space’ (1992), ‘The Sex of Architecture’ (1996) and ‘Domesticity at War’ (2007).
