The Urban Function of the Infraordinary: Dry Cleaners as Social Vertexes

The spaces of the city that we pass through on a daily basis, is worn half-invisible by use. Often, we are more concerned with the extraordinary than its opposite – what Georges Perec coined the infraordinary (Perec 1997). This project seeks to uncover the unheeded spaces of dry cleaners as a place of social coexistence that has ‘a function that is separate from their practical use’ (Jorn 1954).
A London dry cleaner serves as testing ground, employing critical spatial practices and creative writing as research tools. The dry cleaner does not simply clean clothes, but is a social vertex and physical interface through which (non-)events unfold, trajectories thickens and people of the neighbourhood coexists as familiar strangers (Milgram 2010; Paulos and Goodman 2004) through events in real-time and deposits over time. It is a semi-public space and an implosion of the external neighbourhood, partly through allowing for occupation, inhabitation and co-authoring. Hence, these latent qualities and spatial materiality of the infraordinary form vital components of the social dimension of the city and points towards a recalibration of current urban practices.