How thrilling and sad it was to hear someone say, driving by the Guild House recently, “You wonder what all the fuss was about.”

The design of Guild House seemed extraordinary in its time because it looked ordinary. As housing for the elderly sponsored by the Friends Neighborhood Guild, it sits at home in its context—a conventional urban neighborhood in north Philadelphia combining typical row houses and occasional industrial buildings of the second half of the last century all in brick.

Robert Venturi, “Guild House, Twenty-Five Years Later,” in Iconography and Electronics Upon A Generic Architecture: A View from the Drafting Room (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 133.

The fall issue of MAS Context will focus on the topic of ORDINARY.

This issue seeks to explore the value of commonness and the everyday environment. It will focus on those elements that go unnoticed or that we take for granted, from buildings and objects to experiences and traditions. We will look at the ordinary elements of life that are worth rediscovering and celebrating, as well as look ahead to what will become ordinary in the future.

Submissions for ORDINARY can be in the form of critical essays, photo essays, analytical studies, data visualizations, visual explorations, interviews, films, etc.

For more information about the submission process, visit MAS submission guidelines.

Please, send your submission to [email protected] by Monday, June 16, 2014.

23 | ORDINARY FALL 14 will be published in early September 2014.

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