Playboy Architecture, 1953-1979

Address
Henschelstraße 18, 60314 Frankfurt/Main Map
Hours
Tue, Thu–Sun 11 am–6 pm, Wed 11 am–8 pm

Anyone leafing through early copies of Playboy will not only come across the classic centerfolds and photos of nudes, but also encounter architectural icons by Buckminster Fuller, John Lautner and Moshe Safdie. And in-between photo-spreads where carefully arranged designer chairs form the basis for showcasing the Playmates draped over them. Alongside seductive images, interviews with and portraits of renowned architects such as Mies van der Rohe offered a theoretical approach to avant-garde architecture. The design objects and buildings comprised an escapist world for the male readers, one staged in a novel way, and served as a source of inspiration when it came to designing their own homes. In the context of the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement, Playboy invented the design-loving bachelor who became a role model for an entire generation and soon appeared on TV and the silverscreen, in the guise of James Bond, for example. 
The exhibition presents original copies of the Playboy magazine, as well as models and furniture to highlight the central role Playboy played in encouraging the spread of International Style architecture from the 1950s to the 1970s. It likewise documents how the famous erotic magazine introduced a mass readership to the world of futurist-urban design visions. 
DAM will be hosting a scaled-down version of this traveling exhibition, which was first shown at Bureau Europa (Maastricht) and arose in cooperation with Princeton University.