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This paper came about from an astonishing observation of the usual, the commonplace, the ordinary, and even more profoundly, of the infra-ordinary. In recent years, the appropriation and instrumentalisation of the commonplace has become a recurrent practise. We propose examining the transition from the infra-ordinary towards the extraordinary using a peculiar form of representation through drawing. We will attempt to highlight certain forms of representing projects that have been characterised over the last ten years by an awareness of the lack of economic and environmental resources, raising the visibility of every-day actions in the urban, architectural and artistic environment. The infra-ordinary allows us to reveal the subversive potential of the commonplace to sometimes become extraordinary experiences. In short, the infraordinary is extraordinary, and the seed of the extraordinary lies in the commonplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to propose and discuss certain theoretical supositions, concepts and notions which are constituent elements of a psycosocial framework necessary in the approach and study of urban everyday life and common sense, viewed from a discursive perspective that has been developing over the last ten years. Some of our main references are general propositions of social constructionism (Gergen, 1985; Shotter & Burton, 1983), discursive psychology (Billig, 1991-94; Parker, 1995-96), and hermeneutics (Riccoeur, 1998; Gadamer, 1979). In this manner we adopted discurse analisis as a basical methodological strategy to explore dis-cursive productions comming from: people ("live discurse"), local political institutions ("official discurse") and local mass media ("public discurse"). Some theoretical supositions are asumed here: a) the city is a semantical being which produces its own discurse and induces citizens to generate it too; b) discurse is a psychosocial and cultural founda- tional praxis: which is founded by discurse and the reality it talks about; c) the city's realities are not an a priori data which exists independently of individual thinkers, but a complex historical process-product constantly rebuilt by people; d) common sense is a transdiscursive dimension heavely charged by the semantic sedimentation of words and popular expressions comming from history and traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]