Art and Architecture = Enternal Youth?

A story today marks one of those special occasions when the NYT profiles "different" people. In this case the subjects are two very out there artists, Arakawa and Gins, who recently completed their first house in the US - a crazy, fun house-looking structure they claim will increase your immune system and sustain longer life.

Then Ms. Gins, 66, began holding forth about the health benefits of the house, officially called Bioscleave House (Lifespan Extending Villa). Its architecture makes people use their bodies in unexpected ways to maintain equilibrium, and that, she said, will stimulate their immune systems.
“They ought to build hospitals like this,” she said.
A reporter, who thinks they should never, ever build hospitals like this, tried to go with the flow. Like the undulating floor, Arakawa and Gins, as they are known professionally, tend to throw people off balance.

...In 45 years of working together as artists, poets and architects, they have developed an arcane philosophy of life and art, a theory they call reversible destiny. Essentially, they have made it their mission — in treatises, paintings, books and now built projects like this one — to outlaw aging and its consequences.

... 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.

The reporter starts skeptical, which in the face of the unbridled enthusiasm of Arakawa (called a 10-yr old trapped in a 60-yr old Japanese man's body) could make him seem curmudgeonly, but by the end you can tell that even he (along with the couple's numerous financial and artistic supporters) got caught up in the whirlwind of zest and passion. The full story can be found here and an audio slide show here.

thanks pops