Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life

Currated by Andrew Blauvelt. Essays by Jonathan Bell, Aaron Betsky, Andrew Blauvelt, and Jamer Hunt. 

Design is a paradox in our lives, both anonymous and conspicuous, familiar and strange. It surrounds us while fading from view, becoming second nature yet standing apart from the world in which it exists, an alien presence against the grain of everyday life. 

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 question the habitual, transform the commonplace, alter our expectations of dwelling, and blur the boundaries of form and function. Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life features more than forty innovative projects drawn internationally from the fields of architectural, product, furniture, fashion, and graphic design. 

This fully illustrated catalogue includes essays on the tactics of formlessness and its impact on everyday consumption, the potential of an endlessly transformable environment to extend product life cycles, and ruminations on the strange and familiar worlds of design. 

• Walker Art Center, 2003
• Cloth, 9 inches x 6.25 inches
• 344 pages, color images