Modern design, Colomina says, became part of the equipment for seduction. In part that’s because of what modernism was not. In 1953—the same year Playboy was born—the editor of House Beautiful wrote an article called “The Threat to America,” dedicated in part to slamming van der Rohe’s germinal, open-plan Farnsworth House, in Plano, Illinois. Elizabeth Gordon decried minimalist architects like van der Rohe as proponents of a grim, internationally influenced style—maybe because that giant open room didn’t lend itself to traditional, multi-room family life.

“Playboy Architecture, 1953—1979,” a new exhibit at the Elmhurst Art Museum in Chicago, features this rendering for “The Playboy’s Town House,” from a 1962 issue of the magazine. It was originally created for Hefner himself.
“Playboy Architecture, 1953—1979,” a new exhibit at the Elmhurst Art Museum in Chicago, features this rendering for “The Playboy’s Town House,” from a 1962 issue of the magazine. It was originally created for Hefner himself. -  The marquee feature—and ultimate signifier of wealth and leisure—was a swimming pool in the atrium.  © HUMEN TAM

Playboy, on the other hand, welcomed thinkers like van der Rohe and spaces not meant for families. The magazine’s editors used these designers to construct the idea of the Playboy pad, a space the Elmherst’s academics describe as “a universe of radical interiority and total environments that sustain the art of seduction.” The editors even had hypothetical blueprints. “The Playboy’s Town House,” from a 1962 issue of the magazine, was originally created for Hefner himself. The marquee feature—and ultimate signifier of wealth and leisure—was a swimming pool in the atrium.

The layout for the Town House also came with pages of product recommendations, prices, and places to shop—an unusual move for magazines at the time. Colomina says Playboy‘s decision to feature chairs, which were accessible in ways apartments and indoor swimming pools were not, was particularly significant. They helped create a new class of bachelor-consumer—patrons of designers who still sell today and of publications that offer aspirational looks at gear and gadgets for modern living. 

In Playboy, Publisher Hugh Hefner wasn’t pitching the post-war picket-fence-and-garage lifestyle. Playboy men lived in cities, in bachelor pads.
In Playboy, Publisher Hugh Hefner wasn’t pitching the post-war picket-fence-and-garage lifestyle. Playboy men lived in cities, in bachelor pads. - To be clear, Playboy has always featured naked, or nearly naked, women. Was the high-end modernism the backdrop for them, or were they the backdrop for shelter porn? That was the deal the magazine was trying to cut. To be aspirational, not smutty, it needed to consider not just the women in its pages, but their surroundings. In doing so, it created a platform for a new wave of designers. Playboy may have needed design—but design needed Playboy, too.