For twenty-five years, the Program of Media + Modernity (M+M) at Princeton University has operated as a critical intersection for the study of how images, texts, and technologies define our physical environment. To mark this quarter-century milestone, the School of Architecture has unveiled *Media and Modernity: 25 Years of Thinking Through Mediation*, an exhibition that distills decades of intellectual ephemera into a singular, immersive installation.
Curated by long-time director Beatriz Colomina alongside Foivos Geralis and Antonio Cantero, the exhibition reflects the program’s history of bridging disparate fields—examining everything from Le Corbusier’s relationship with mass media to the architectural implications of mid-century lifestyle magazines. The design, executed by the New York studio Agency–Agency, centers on a semi-transparent silver curtain. Using a sublimation printing process, the studio transferred twenty-five years of seminar posters onto the fabric, creating a shimmering, tactile archive that wraps the gallery space.
The choice of material is more than aesthetic; it is an attempt to replicate the "black box" atmosphere of room N-107, the seminar’s longtime home. By creating an intimate, reflective enclosure within the university’s broader infrastructure, the installation mirrors the program's core mission: to provide a space where the built world can be interrogated through the lens of the media that represents it. It is a reminder that in the modern era, architecture is rarely just stone and steel—it is also the information that surrounds it.
With reporting from Dezeen Architecture.
Source · Dezeen Architecture
