Pornotopia or the architecture of Playboy
We are at the beginning of the fifties, WWII is over, the Gis are returning home. The “suburban family” ideology is very strong. Women should stay at home taking care of the house and the kids while the men are working in the city.
Typical representation of the perfect American family
It is in this context that Hugh Hefner launches his magazine „Playboy“ in 1953. It is a statement against this ideology. To be and to stay a bachelor is a choice.
Playboy Magazine, First issue, 1953
Through his vision of architecture, he is going to create the ideal bachelor pad or in other words an interior male playground for the playboy. This playground is not to be located in the boring suburbs but in the city, a place of excitement, innovation, and diversity.
The Playboy Townhouse, Facade, Architect R. Donald Jaye, 1962
The Playboy Townhouse, Section, Architect R. Donald Jaye, 1962
His desgins are based on a male reappropriation of the interior space. In his drawings, the depicted architecture is a modern one, where most of the spaces are intertwined one into another to allow an easy control of the environment as an easy movement into the space. Any traces of domestic life, aka woman’s presence, is erased. This space is thought as a hunting spot, the bachelor being the hunter and the woman being the prey. Everything is thought for one final goal: instant sex. Only few steps separate the living space from the sleeping one.
Playboy’s progress, Playboy’s issue of May 1954
As for the furniture, the chair is not only a place where one sits but through a „flip flop“ mecanism, it becomes a tool to bring a woman from a sitting position into a laying one. She should have no time to have second thoughts.
P40, Osvaldo Borsani, 1955
Same thing with the bed. It is not anymore a simple sleeping space. Now it is turned into a control space. From there, you can adjust the lights or the locks of the appartment for instance.
Hugh Hefner’s rotating bed
However, the most important attribute to the new bachelor is the girl-next-door, the bunny. Without her, no playboy. This idea of the girl-next-door is a playboy creation transforming every woman around you into a potential prey, a potential playmate. She has to be nice, clean, and willing for instant sex.
Alice Denham Playboy Playmate for July 1956
Hugh Hefner also organizes parties with his bunnies and give the opportunity to other men to experience the life of this new bachelor state of mind.The private becomes public. Cameras were on, the interior was staged. Life seems to be a constant spectacle, a constant state of joy and pleasure. In those parties, men could watch but not touch.
Hugh Hefner with his bunnies, Chicago, 1959
Of course, this perpetual spectacle also got a backstage side and not everything was perfect in a perfect world. At the top of the playboy mansion, the playmates were living in dormitories, had to pay rent and as stated in their contract, always had to have a perfect appearance.
However, it is interesting to see how Hugh Hefner appropriate the modern architecture to create a place of control (free plan makes visual control easier), a place of spectacle thanks to the big openings making visible the inside life to the exterior world.
More information in the article “Pornotopia” by Paul (Beatriz) Preciado published in “Cold War Hothouses: Inventing Postwar cutlure from Cockpit to Playboy”, eds. Beatriz Colomina, Annmarie Brennan and Jeannie Kim (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004), 216–253″