The Relationship Of Media And Architecture In The City By Beatriz Colomina

There are many influential studies about modern architecture in the extended field of the architectural history. Lately, architectural history studies shifted their center from conventional concerns to media and its side products. One of them - the focus point of this review- is Beatriz Colomina’s book (which was winner of the 1995 International Architecture Book Award sponsored by the American Institute of Architects) that examines the relationship of media and architecture. This paper will examine the book’s, and of course Colomina’s, contribution to the discipline. To do that, I will investigate the background of Colomina’s approach and methodology, the reason why she framed her book in between Le Corbusier and Adolf Loos, the role of documentation,
Here, Colomina considers the media as an outcome of the war technology that provided new communication technologies. To her, these technologies changed –and defined- the understanding of city. So, city started the adaptation of modern life. Also, the conventional boundary between private and public is disrupted. She states, “… architecture becomes ‘modern’ not simply by using glass, steel, or reinforced concrete… but precisely by engaging with the new mechanical equipment of the mass media. ... this engagement cannot be thought outside of war … Modern architecture has to be rethought as war
Individuals who live inside of the modern environment possess different identities. From now on, individuals start to investigate themselves in the identity struggle that city life has created. In this struggle, they are also putting a mask on their faces not to gain a brand-new identity, but to protect their intimacy. In line with this, Colomina allied the mask artifact with architecture. This artifact generates the “intimacy” and “space of intimacy”, but is beyond the privacy and publicity. Here, Colomina directs the reader to think the unnecessary attempt of this protection, because the city itself already became a mask. Modern life merged the experiences of individuals with their existence as society ; individuals became the public itself. Ipso facto, in architecture, the state that locates in the inside is actually locates on the