Abstract
In light of current attention to the `everyday', this paper attends to the construction and negotiation of one particular building as an avowedly `extraordinary place'. The paper examines how unusual mixtures of diverse properties (such as `artwork' and `tourist attraction') at the Hundertwasser-Haus in Vienna are always actively and collectively operated such that the house produces and maintains its extraordinariness. Moreover, it forwards the contention that a crucial way in which the extraordinary can be produced is in the meshing of the spectacular with the mundane, everyday and practical, rather than in a separation of the former from the latter. The paper concludes by considering how the complexities of this case study might allow us to reflect upon the critical role of extraordinariness in apprehending the geographies that we take most for granted.
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