Domesticity at War (Mit Press) - Hardcover

Colomina, Beatriz

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262033615 ISBN 13: 9780262033619

Publisher: The MIT Press, 2007

Synopsis

When American architects, designers, and cultural institutions converted wartime strategies to new ends, the aggressive promotion of postwar domestic bliss became another kind of weapon.

In the years immediately following World War II, America embraced modern architecture―not as something imported from Europe, but as an entirely new mode of operation, with original and captivating designs made in the USA. In Domesticity at War, Beatriz Colomina shows how postwar American architecture adapted the techniques and materials that were developed for military applications to domestic use. Just as manufacturers were turning wartime industry to peacetime productivity―going from missiles to washing machines―American architects and cultural institutions were, in Buckminster Fuller's words, turning "weaponry into livingry."This new form of domesticity itself turned out to be a powerful weapon. Images of American domestic bliss―suburban homes, manicured lawns, kitchen accessories―went around the world as an effective propaganda campaign. Cold War anxieties were masked by endlessly repeated images of a picture-perfect domestic environment. Even the popular conception of the architect became domesticated, changing from that of an austere modernist to a plaid-shirt wearing homebody.

Colomina examines, with interlocking case studies and an army of images, the embattled and obsessive domesticity of postwar America. She reports on, among other things, MOMA's exhibition of a Dymaxion Deployment Unit (DDU), a corrugated steel house suitable for use as a bomb shelter, barracks, or housing; Charles and Ray Eames's vigorous domestic life and their idea of architecture as a flexible stage for the theatrical spectacle of everyday life; and the American lawn as patriotic site and inalienable right.Domesticity at War itself has a distinctive architecture. Housed within the case are two units: one book of text, and one book of illustrations―most of them in color, including advertisements, newspaper and magazine articles, architectural photographs, and more.

About this title

About the Author:

Beatriz Colomina is Professor of Architecture and Founding Director of the Program in Media and Modernity at Princeton University. She is the editor of Sexuality and Space, which was awarded the International Book Award by the American Institute of Architects. She is the coeditor of Cold War Hot Houses: Inventing Postwar Culture from Cockpit to Playboy. Her most recent book is Doble exposición: Arquitectura a través del arte.

Review:

What is most fascinating about Domesticity At War is Colomina's exploration of the 'complex interactions of architecture and media that transforms the relationship between public and private.'

―Catherine Croft, Building Design

About this edition

• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0262033615
• ISBN 13: 9780262033619
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 280