JASON DEROUIN
jason.derouin@ttu.edu
Society of Architectural Historians Annual Conference
Graduate Student Lightning Talks
Chicago, IL
April 15–19, 2015
Title of presentation: “The Mid-Century Bachelor’s Apartment: An Image of Spectacle”
Abstract
During the mid-twentieth century, magazines such as Esquire, Playboy and Rogue
included features on modern living that persuaded single, independent men that an
elegantly appointed home would facilitate intimacy. Designers’ schemes that
accompanied the text laid out whimsical pastiches of architecture and décor that would, if
realized, give rise to bewilderment, and consequently effect seduction. In this way,
readers were advised about their homes, as well as the purchase, placement and collective
power of furnishings. This study of the pictorialization of bachelor culture implements
Guy Debord’s formulation of spectacle. The illustrations of fictitious apartments
considered here elaborate conventions of retail display, including mechanization,
accenting commodity fetishism and accumulation of capital. I propose that the potency
of the bachelor pad derives from spectacle.