Public and Private. Architecture as Mass Media

Beatriz Colomina (born 1952) is a theorist, architectural historian, and professor at Princeton University. In her book, she explores the phenomenon of modern architecture, which, in her opinion, is one of the mass media alongside advertising and photography. Colomina examines, on the one hand, Le Corbusier's projects, his spectacle houses, where windows become a camera obscura, and on the other hand, the buildings of Adolf Loos, which turn inward, where exteriors embody the public merely as 'masks' hiding interiors that embody the private. The author questions the status of architecture as a high art and raises the question: Is it possible today to draw a clear line between subject and object, window and movie camera, public and private?

The publication is released as part of a joint project of the Ad Marginem publishing house and Tochka bank.