The Infraordinary

Bilingual edition (English/German) / Zweisprachige Ausgabe (deutsch/englisch) GAM 20 is dedicated to the search for the everyday in architecture. Its title, “The Infraordinary,” refers to a concept first used by Paul Virilio and Georges Perec: In the 1970s, they introduced the term l’infra-ordinaire to describe the habitual and ordinary—the opposite of the extraordinary. With this in mind, GAM 20 delves more deeply into the non-extraordinary in architecture. Seeking to go beyond glorifying or emphasizing the banal, it highlights stories of the reconceptualization and revaluation of existing architecture, as well as its day-to-day use. In daily life, after all, architecture tends not to look the way it does in glossy magazines, on the websites of renowned architecture firms, or on Instagram.