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© Walker Art Center

Koers, Zeinstra, van Gelderen, "Tumble House", 1998

MVRDV, "Dutch Pavilion for Expo 2000", 2000

Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano, LOT-EK, "Mobile Dwelling Unit", 2003

Moreno Ferrari for CP Company, "Armchair from the Transformables Collection", 2001


Dutch designers and architects included in the exhibition:
- Jop van Bennekom
- Thomas Bernstrand
- Jurgen Bey
- Koers, Zeinstra, Van Gelderen
- MVRDV
- Marijn van der Poll
- Frank Tjepkema and Peter van der Jagt
- Marcel Wanders

For more information, please visit:
www.walkerart.org

Strangely Familiar:
Design and Everyday Life

Press Release
Contact: Karen Gysin, 612.375.7651 karen.gysin@walkerart.org

Designs that create the backdrop for our everyday lives to be showcased in the exhibition Strangely Familiar, Design and Everyday life. Traveling exhibition to premiere at The Walker, June 8 - September 7, 2003

The prolific output by designers from the fields of architecture, product, furniture, fashion, and graphic design that, particularly over the past decade, has evolved a new landscape of products and spaces will be examined in the Walker Art Center exhibition Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life, premiering in Minneapolis June 8-September 7, 2003. As producers of the objects, spaces, and messages that surround us, designers play a crucial role in the creation of contemporary cultural sensibilities. Occupying a greater awareness in the public's consciousness and a ubiquitous presence in the human-built environment, designers' verbal/visual messages, manufactured objects, and forms of shelter and transportation create the backdrop for our everyday lives.

The multidisciplinary exhibition Strangely Familiar will feature approximately 40 innovative projects, drawn internationally, that amplify four themes across a range of disciplines: the design of extraordinary spaces and objects that reference and transform commonplace objects and conditions; the multifunctional object that changes both shape and use, thereby blurring the traditional relationships between form and function; portable structures that respond to nomadic conditions of lightness and ephemerality, thereby undermining long-held architectural principles of site-specificity and permanence; and polemical objects that force us to reconsider our relationship to products-that dictate new rituals of use and expectations of performance.

A major theme of the exhibition is the re-presentation of the everyday with extraordinary projects that foreground what is commonplace. For example, MVRDV's design of the Netherlands' pavilion at Expo 2000 in Hanover, Germany, transforms the typical elements of the Dutch landscape such as water, windmills, forests, and flowers by simply but dramatically stacking them, creating a spectacular example of artificial nature. On a more domestic scale, Chicago-based Garofalo Architects' Markow Residence transforms the typical suburban house with dynamic additions that evolve from the complex geometry of computer software, producing a hybrid structure that is at once familiar and strange.
The multifunctional object also displays intrinsically hybrid qualities, whether in the form of furniture or clothing. Moreno Ferrari's pioneering Transformables collection for CP Company of Italy features garments that convert into, for instance, inflatable armchairs, a kite, or a tent. Martin Ruiz de Azua's Basic House is conversely a garment-sized shelter, a cube of metallic material that weighs only a few grams and can be transported in one's pocket until needed. The mixing of product functions is a cornerstone of contemporary furniture design as witnessed by Julian Lion Boxenbaum's Ruggelah Chair that unrolls to form a bed. On an architectural scale, Tumble House is a six-sided structure designed by Koers, Zeinstra, and van Gelderen of the Netherlands that allows users to rotate the building to six different positions. Each option changes the interior functionality of elements; for example, a door becomes a window or skylight.
Another theme within the exhibition explores the users' behavior in relation to the designed object. This takes many forms, ranging from greater physical interaction to the reconsideration of common routines and rituals. Allan Wexler's Gardening Sukkah is an outdoor structure that contains all the necessary implements to plant, harvest, and prepare a meal to celebrate the Jewish Sukkoth festival. This self-contained environment is also portable since the building rests upon a wheelbarrowlike base. Product designer Michael Anatassiades develops objects that highlight human interaction and product responsiveness. For example, his Social and Anti-Social Lights only perform their function in the presence or absence of sound. Sometimes the object questions our habits of consumption or comments on the world of goods around us. For example, Anthony Dunne + Fiona Raby, designers from London, are interested in how people interact and adapt to electronic products. In Dunne + Raby's Placebo Project, users are given the opportunity of living with a newly created object-for instance, a table embedded with compasses whose needles spin wildly when in contact with electromagnetic fields, such as those emitted by cell phones or a computer. Paola Ulian's Greediness Meters are rulers made from chocolate (both white and dark varieties) that measure their own rate of consumption.

Other projects explore the role of a participatory or "do-it-yourself" design. A series of products by do create of the Netherlands requires the physical interaction of the user for their ultimate realization. Do Hit is a cube of metal that comes with its own sledgehammer to transform it into a chair; Do Break is a ceramic vase with a special coating that allows the user to smash it without destroying the piece-the resulting pattern thereby "customizes" the object. Nucleo Global Design's Terra Armchair is a cardboard form and package of grass seeds that allow the customer to grow their own outdoor seating. The Copenhagen-based www.fortunecookies.dk developed Felt 12x12, a series of small square pieces of felt, as a system for the user to devise various types of garments, from vests to a wedding ensemble.

Portability and modularity are perennial themes within architecture but have gained momentum in recent years as architects embrace more fluid conditions. Markko Hedman's work explores the early-20th-century concept of the "minimum house" in contemporary circumstances. For example, his Wooden Cube is a two-piece mobile summer cabin that unpacks itself like a matchbox, doubling the size of its interior, while his SNAIL project employs modular units that can be arranged in various interconnecting configurations to form unique living and working environments. Renowned Japanese architect Shigeru Ban's Paper Loghouse was developed in response to the devastating earthquake that struck Japan in the mid-1990s. Using simple materials-cardboard tubes for walls, a canvas roof, and crates for a foundation-Ban created an easily assembled shelter for victims of this natural disaster. A re-creation of the Paper Loghouse in the galleries will allow visitors to see the beauty and ingenuity of Ban's work.

LOT-EK: Mobile Dwelling Unit
Continuing the theme of portable architecture, the Walker Art Center will debut a new project from Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano of the New York based architectural firm LOT-EK, known for its amazing transformations of industrial objects. Commissioned by the University Art Museum at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the Mobile Dwelling Unit transforms a standard, 20-foot-long shipping container into a personal living space. A series of slices into the body of the container allows various sub volumes to be pushed out for greater interior space and to be pushed in for shipping. The sub-volumes contain different functions, including a kitchen, media center, bedroom, and bathroom. Since the shipping container is already integrated within global shipping, rail, and trucking systems, the unit is also highly mobile. The MDU will be installed outdoors in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.

Telematic Table Project
The exhibition will also debut a prototype of the Telematic Table designed by Marek Walczak, Michael McAllister, Peter Kennard, and Jakub Segen. Like a regular table, the Telematic Table is designed for social interactions but utilizes digital technologies and an innovative interface to facilitate learning more about the arts. The prototype was commissioned by the Walker Art Center with funding provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. Through an international competition, the winning project was selected. The Telematic Table will provide social learning experiences in the Walker's expanded facility scheduled for completion in 2005. Designed to create links between disciplines and ideas in the Walker's programming, it also fosters connections among visitors by identifying items of mutual interest. The table's innovative gestural interface allows multiple users to drag with their fingers, at the same time, digital objects from "pools" of available information, providing museum visitors greater access to the Walker's diverse resources.

Opening Weekend
A Preview Party celebrating the exhibition will take place Saturday, June 7, followed by an opening-day lecture or panel discussion on Sunday, June 8. Program details will be announced.

Related Events
Focusing on exhibition themes, the Walker's annual Summer Design Series will bring renowned architects and designers from around the world to the Twin Cities every Tuesday evening during the month of July. Details on all related events will be announced.

Catalogue
An illustrated 272-page catalogue, available at tour venues and through Distributed Art Publishers (D.A.P.), will include essays by exhibition curator Andrew Blauvelt, Design Director at the Walker Art Center; Aaron Betsky, Director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute and former curator of architecture and design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Jonathan Bell, freelance design critic based in London, editor of such books as Carchitecture: When the Car and the City Collide and The Transformable House; and Jamer Hunt, cultural anthropologist and director of the graduate program in industrial design at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

Exhibition Tour Schedule
Lille 2004, Cultural Capital of Europe
Musée de l'Hospice Comtesse, Lille, France
September 4-November 28, 2004
Additional venues to be announced.

Funding
The North American tour of Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life is made possible by generous support from Target Stores. Additional support for the exhibition is provided by the Mondriaan Foundation, with support from the Netherlands Culture Fund of the Dutch Ministries for Foreign Affairs and Education, Culture and Science. Opening events are made possible by Lowry Hill Investments. Promotional assistance provided by MPLS.ST.PAUL Magazine.

Major support for Walker Art Center programs is provided by the Minnesota State Arts Board through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature, the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, The Bush Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation through the Doris Duke Fund for Jazz and Dance and the Doris Duke Performing Arts Endowment Fund, Target Stores, Marshall Field's, and Mervyn's with support from the Target Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, General Mills Foundation, Coldwell Banker Burnet, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Arts, American Express Philanthropic Program, Honeywell, The Regis Foundation, The Cargill Foundation, U.S. Bank, Star Tribune Foundation, 3M, and the members of the Walker Art Center.

The Walker Art Center is located at 725 Vineland Place, at Lyndale Avenue South, Minneapolis, one block off Highway I-94. For public information, call
612.375.7622.

Gallery hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, 10 am-5 pm;
Thursday, 10 am-9 pm; Sunday, 11 am-5 pm; closed Monday.
http://www.walkerart.org

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