Death Defying Architecture: A Reality?

Architects Arakawa and Madeline Gins believe that you have a right not to die. Reversible destiny comes as part of their services to you as an architect and designers.

“We believe we can help extend your lives,” architects’ claim.

They recently completed a house (not for mortals) in East Hamoton, New York. The house is called Bioscleave House which literally implies Life Extending Villa. Children are forbidden to enter this house, and even adults have to sign a waiver before they enter the house. The house comes with its own ‘User’s Manual’. The house is meant to lead its users into a perpetually “tentative” relationship with their surroundings, and thereby keep them young.

Click on the picture for a Slide Show on Bioscleave House

What is so special about this house, you ask? Well, apart from immortality, the house has following list of features:

• The walk on the house’s concrete floor which rises and falls is comparable to moon walk. The floor is made in a traditional Japanese style, using hardened soil, here mixed with a little cement.
• The undulating floors provide you with a luxury of mountain climbing within the comfort and security of your home. For the not so sure-footed there are a dozen brightly colored metal poles to grab on to.
• Its architecture makes people use their bodies in unexpected ways to maintain equilibrium, and that will stimulate their immune systems.
• The walls are made of various materials including metal and translucent polycarbonate, which admits a gentle light.
• Walls painted, somewhat disconcertingly, in about 40 colors if not more.
• Multiple levels meant to induce the sensation of being in two spaces at once.
• Oddly angled light switches and outlets.
• Windows at varying heights.
• No doors or privacy obstructions in the house. However, they do provide you with hooks in the ceiling, and someday the house could be festooned with curtains or other dividers.
• A sunken kitchen in the middle of the house.
• The finished house consists of four rectangular rooms surrounding a free-form living space.

The only missing feature is ceilings meeting the floors. The original owner could not bear with the high construction costs and sold the project for $2.25 million which includes $1 million from the new owner to complete construction of the project.

Since 1963, artists-architects-poets Arakawa and Madeline Gins have worked in collaboration to produce visionary, boundary-defying art and architecture. Their seminal work, The Mechanism of Meaning, has been exhibited widely throughout the world.

One of their first built architectural projects, a Yoro park in central Japan called “Site of Reversible Destiny,” was completed in 1995. Made up of acres of warped surfaces, it offers visitors advice, in a handout leaflet, like “Instead of being fearful of losing your balance, look forward to it.”

Perhaps Roberta Smith has to be believed when he writes, “Theoretical follies, one of the plagues of contemporary architecture, have their place, and it’s on paper.”

Click on the picture for Audio Show on Bioscleave House by the Architects.

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