papalampropoulos syriopoulou
playboy archaeology - junkyard of monuments I
Status: March Architectural Design / Bartlett School of Architecture
Program: Conceptual
Year: 2004
Location: London, UK
Architect: Leonidas Papalampropoulos
Tutor: S. Herron
The archaeology of Playboy aims to indulge into the absurdity of its culture, to appropriate its myths and reconstruct its world beneath the metropolis of London. A contemporary archaeological site has been composed, a junkyard of forgotten monuments and symbols, that provides shelter to the unconscious of contemporary culture.
Throughout the magazine’s archive two images have been selected, the Bunny and Marilyn.
They appear simultaneously in the first issue of the magazine symbolizing the mythical bachelor and the supreme object of desire. The predominant iconology is repeated as a substitute, and represents the repressed "Oedipus Complex" of Playboy.
The landscape is formed by two large pits surrounding the giant structures. The machines liquify, recycle and remodel the two archetypes and their perfect shadows over the context. The worship of the image becomes worship of the shadow and vice versa. The archaeology of Playboy, trapped in a game of similarities and urban schizophrenia, obsessively repeats itself over the original dipole of archetypes.