Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture As Mass Media

by Beatriz Colomina

Book Overview

Through a series of close readings of two major figures of the modern movement, Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier, Beatriz Colomina argues that architecture only becomes modern in its engagement with the mass media, and that in so doing it radically displaces the traditional sense of space and subjectivity. Privacy and Publicity boldly questions certain ideological assumptions underlying the received view of modern architecture and reconsiders...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0262531399
• ISBN13: 9780262531399
• Release Date: February 1996
• Publisher: MIT Press
• Length: 402 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.5" x 10.5"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Every designer should read this

The best way, somtimes, to talk about a larger condition is to delve into specifics. Colomina uses Loos and Corbusier to draw out comparisons about the use of information. Considering the amount of architectural monographs being churned out on a daily basis, and the creation of terms such as "information architecture," it's extremely valuable to look at how modern architecture might have started from an alliance between types of publicity and design. Both Loos and Corbusier come out, biography-wise, as extremely creepy, though shrewd in shaping how their work is percieved by the traces that they leave behind. In Corbusier's case, he leaves an archive stuffed with minutia, an overabundance of information to supplement the built work. Loos, on the other hand, leaves very little, and thus what little remains of his work requires imagination to fill gaps in his story. What a designer can gather from this is to ask the question: how does what we do effect what our work is? Colomina's work functions reflexively as well as she works from "evidence" to create representations of both architects. It is a compelling argument, passionately written, and not the least boring.