Das gewöhnliche Design (The ordinary Design) is a hidden classic of German design history, something the vinyl era would have called a B-side hit. Newly edited by Frank Philippin and Florian Walzel, the facsimile returns the work to a wider audience.
As early as 1976 a group of students and young professors at the Faculty of Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Darmstadt questioned the way design objects were generally perceived, talked, and written about. The group led by Friedrich Friedl and Gerd Ohlhauser started to collect ordinary things such as bottle openers, air pumps, or bus timetables. In an ad-hoc approach these objects, all from anonymous authors, where exhibited at the faculty under the title The ordinary Design. This show, which presented only “boring” everyday commodities, surprisingly received national attention and discussions flared up in the design press.
