This examination of contemporary design culture (from 1998 to 2002) brings together more than 40 innovative projects from around the world, spanning the fields of architectural, product, furniture, and graphic design. Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life explores four fundamental ideas that question conventional assumptions about the design of objects and spaces: designs that reference and radically transform commonplace objects and environments; multifunctional objects that change both shape and use, thereby blurring the traditionally fixed relationship between “form and function;” portable structures that respond to nomadic conditions of lightness and ephemerality; and controversial objects that force us to reconsider our relationship to products that dictate new rituals of use and expectations of performance. Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life is organized by the Walker Art Center and will be accompanied by an illustrated catalogue.