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.

Matthias Castorph is a professor of Design in Existing Structures and Heritage Protection at TU Graz. He studied architecture at TU München and completed his doctorate at the University of Kaiserslautern. He is a partner at the architecture firm Lehmann, Tabillion & Castorph Architektur Stadtplanung Gesellschaft mbH in Munich.

Julian Müller is a sociologist. He was a visiting lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture at TU Graz from 2022–23 and currently works at Leuphana University Lüneburg. Among other things, his research is concerned with sociocultural issues, the sociology of daily life, and the interrelationship between architecture and society.