Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life

by Blauvelt, Andrew

• ISBN13: 9780935640755
• ISBN10: 0935640754
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-08-01
• Publisher: Distributed Art Pub Inc

Summary

In the past decade, designers have become increasingly engaged with the quotidian. This shift away from more strictly formal and functional concerns has allowed them to freely explore design's contexts and effects. A light that responds to silence, a table that knows where it is, a pig farm the size of a skyscraper, a coat that becomes a tent, a house that fits in your pocket--these projects by innovators in the field of design question the habitual, transform the commonplace, alter our notions of dwelling and blur the boundaries between form and function. Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Lifeexplores the paradox of design in our daily lives. Anonymous and conspicuous, familiar and strange, design surrounds us while fading from view, becoming second nature to us and yet remaining still somehow elusive. This exhibition catalogue includes more than 40 innovative projects drawn internationally from the fields of architecture, product, furniture, fashion and graphic design. Among the designers and architects featured are Shigeru Ban, MVRDV, LOT-EK, Atelier Bow-Wow, Dunne & Raby, Marcel Wanders, Michael Anastassiades, Constantin and Laurene Leon Boym, and Allan Wexler. This richly illustrated volume includes essays on the tactics of formlessness and its impact on everyday consumption, the potential of an endlessly transformable environment to extend product lifecycles, and ruminations on the strange and familiar worlds of design.

Table of Contents

Foreword	8	(3)
Acknowledgments	11	(3)
Andrew Blauvelt	14	(24)
Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life
Aaron Betsky	38	(18)
The Strangeness of the Familiar in Design
Jamer Hunt	56	(16)
Just Re-Do It: Tactical Formlessness, and Everyday Consumption
Jonathan Bell	72	(17)
Ruins, Recycling, Smart Buildings, and the Endlessly Transformable Environment
Rituals of Use	89	(56)
Placebo Project, Anti-Social Light, Dialog, Free Play, Felt 12x12, do break, do hit, do swing, Greediness Meter, Insipid Collection
Portable Structures	145	(58)
Habitat Furtif, Kesä-Kontti (Summer Container), Mobile Dwelling Unit, Etanna (Snail), Portable House, Prefabricated Wooden House, Gyo-an Paper Tea House, Gardening Sukkah, Paper Loghouse, Basic House
Multifunctional Objects	203	(30)
Transformables Collection, Rugelah Chair, Cabriolet/Occasional Table, Tumble House, Composite Housing
Transforming the Everyday	233	(80)
Moth House, Kokon Chair, Markow Residence, Daybed, Terra: The Grass Armchair, Airborne Snotty Vases, Buildings of Disaster, Upstate, RE-, Dutch Pavilion, Pig City, Scrambled Flat
Biographies	313	(18)
Exhibition Checklist	331