Friday 27 June 2008

Life Saving Architecture?

Architect Arakawa (no first name) and Madeline Gins believe that your house should keep you young by challenging you every step of the way. “It’s immoral that people have to die,” Ms. Gins explained. So they designed the Livespan Extending Villa, that "makes people use their bodies in unexpected ways to maintain equilibrium, and that will stimulate their immune systems." “They ought to build hospitals like this,” she said.

Fred Bernstein writes in the New York Times:
"In addition to the floor, which threatens to send the un-sure-footed hurtling into the sunken kitchen at the center of the house, the design features walls painted, somewhat disorientingly, in about 40 colors; multiple levels meant to induce the sensation of being in two spaces at once; windows at varying heights; oddly angled light switches and outlets; and an open flow of traffic, unhindered by interior doors or their adjunct, privacy." "All of it is meant to keep the occupants on guard. Comfort, the thinking goes, is a precursor to death; the house is meant to lead its users into a perpetually “tentative” relationship with their surroundings, and thereby keep them young." New York Times (via Treehugger.com)

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