Apartments Designed to Challenge Residents
Pink Tentacle has photos and a video of the "Reversible Destiny Lofts" in Japan, designed to physically and mentally challenge people in order to keep them healthy.
To NY-based architect-poets and “reversible destiny” philosophers Arakawa & Gins, comfort deserves only a limited role in the home. In their vision, a home that keeps its inhabitants young and healthy should provide perpetual challenges. A tentative relationship with your environment, they argue, is key to “reversing the downhill course of human life.”For rent: Reversible Destiny Lofts (w/ video)Designed to stimulate the senses and force inhabitants to use balance, physical strength and imagination, the lofts feature uneven floors, oddly positioned power switches and outlets, walls and surfaces painted a dizzying array of colors, a tiny exit to the balcony, a transparent shower room, irregularly shaped curtainless windows, and more.
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Sounds fun. For about an hour. Then you're living there and fighting with your apartment building after 10 hours at work and a sh**ty commute.
It's an amazing concept, especially for people trying to stay active while dealing with disability.
Of course, it looks like Pee-Wee's Fun House.
I love it. I bet there isn't one antique white wall in the whole place.
This sounds waaaaaay too much like my worst dreams, which alway include a missing staircase, a door to nowhere, or a room that suddenly shifts its axis.
What's wrong with being a blissfully soporific oldster in a deeply comfortable chintz sitting room (that may or may not have antique white walls)? I look forward to it.
Reminds me of M. Hulot's apartment in Mon Oncle.
I think this is kind of awesome, though probably really expensive. Though it seems like a similar effect (constant minor challenges) could be achieved without necessarily doing it all up in neon colors.
Uneven floors, crawling through windows to get to the balcony, inconveniently placed (or nonfunctional, or not enough) power sources, no privacy - it's like the rich person's approximation of being poor and creatively coping with a sh**ty apartment. I wonder if and how they allow inhabitants to modify the environments they've moved into.
If you're interested, the NYT covered this story back in April: see
http://goodexperience.com/2008/04/userhostile-architect.php
Heard about these years ago... And I still think they are cool.
My dirty laundry sitting on the floor and the cable going from my DSL modem to the phone hookup in the kitchen are enough of a challenge for me, thanks.
Sounds a little like the Winchester Mansion in San Jose, California.
I hope the wild-eyed architects have to live in their creation for at least 6 months before inflicting it on anyone else. I agree with someone above that it would be cool for a couple days, but the annoyances would get really annoying pretty quickly, and for elderly infirm residents could get downright deadly.
Fun until it ain't.
So that's what those are! They're across from the ICU campus in Tokyo, and I used to see them when I was walking around. I always wanted to see inside, but never had the chance.
After living in and seeing a lot of student and residential housing in Tokyo, I have to say those look awesome. They are breathtakingly beautiful and surprising from the outside, and a huge relief from the dour utilitarianism that dominates almost all of Tokyo and its suburbs. If I ever end up in the Mitaka area again and have cash to spare, I might consider renting one.
The one thing that worries me is the floor. When I first looked at it I assumed it must be made of that vinyl-foam stuff they line the floors with in modern playgrounds - but it seems like it might be concrete. That'd cause me to stub more than a few toes.
After 2-3 months you'd have the place figured out and by 6 months you wouldn't even think twice about getting around it.
Which means a proper deployment of this idea would have to be one that reconfigures itself every six months to truly keep residents on their toes.
Also, for all the people in the thread who think this is a bad idea: They've been standing and well-occupied for the last five years at least (I can't find the date they were built anywhere, but that's when I first saw them) and they rent for substantially more than the neighborhood average. That would indicate that it is a good place to live long-term for a lot of people. If no one wanted to live there long-term they'd be torn down and a featureless block of concrete would be built in their place. They're obviously not for everyone, but I'm sure a significant number of their residents really love them. If you don't, then I guess it's not for you.
One word: FIRE!!!
Bold color and varied architectural form is good for the brain. It is good for cities and the people who live in them. My house is pretty saturated in color and I think it would be a lot more "challenging" to live without that.
Rubbish.
One of the main problems in long-lasting health is stress and I could only see the problems becoming more and more stressful with each day. After the "flair of something new" wears off, I can only see it becoming an extreme irritant to have to crawl through a tiny hole to get to a balcony.
Besides, I see the only people that would be interested in a home that constantly tests their mental acuity and health as people who are already doing so.
That being said, at first glance, I thought this was Google Headquarters.
I saw an Arakawa & Gins exhibit at the SoHo Guggenheim in... 1997 or 1998, called... I think "We have decided not to die."
It was cool in model form and even cooler in reality now. They had some crazy ideas.
It's all fine and dandy until someone has to pee in the upside down toilet.
In my dreams, I see Dr. Kawashima falling endlessly down those stairs.
...Looks more like something that would take healthy people and make them physically and mentally challenged. Either that, or those were normal dwellings before the last earthquake in Japan.
AKA "Apartments Designed to Make Residents Puke When They're Drunk".
I'd like to see the same thing done with more wood and stone and maybe some fountains. An environment can be complex and engaging and relaxing at the same time. As any hiker can tell you.
Reversible Sanity is more like it. Just imagine spilling your tea for the 8th time trying to crawl out onto the balcony through that f*cking window. I'd like to spend a weekend there tho, just for kicks.
#6
Uneven floors, crawling through windows to get to the balcony, inconveniently placed (or nonfunctional, or not enough) power sources, no privacy - it's like the rich person's approximation of being poor and creatively coping with a sh**ty apartment.
This is so true! Poverty is the ultimate test to one's physical ability and imagination... unfortunately, it doesn't look this colourful and trendy.
@#20 Dumase:
Ha ha ha!
Ditto #21 Bobette.
How about a house that's spherical, with two giant spikes crossing each other on the bottom of the interior.
I lived in a converted garage for a while. It had a flat roof. If you stopped on the stairs that went to the bathroom, you could hoist yourself up in to a little alcove above the stairs, that had a sloped roof. Crawl for probably 4ft, and there was a little latch that opened on to the flat roof.
There were a multitude of ways to injure yourself whilst going up or down from there, but after you'd done it a few times you could do it gracefully and without thinking. That's where we'd hang our laundry, go up there with friends for drinks and nibbles. We'd even take friends kids up there so we could should them the river and highrises that we looked on to. It's also where I went to lay and look at the stars when I heard my Grandfather had died.
There were so many weird things about that apartment, and visitors would think "you live here?". It was pretty awesome though (great location and views... I could walk to work... etc.), and once you'd been there a couple of weeks, you didn't even notice all the quirks that apparently made it hard to live in.
Japan will have a million people over 100 in a decade or so. This is just architectural Darwinism.
As a child I always used to wonder what it would be like to live in a Habitrail. This strikes me as a pretty fair approximation, minus the whole crapping-in-cedar-shavings part.
I submit that we change the usage of the word "old."
Aged is when you live for an extend period of time.
Old is when you decide you wouldn't want to live in these apartments.
Geezers.
Um, what's the transparent shower room for?
I don't mean that to sound judgmental. I'm fully prepared for there to be a reasonable and hilarious answer to that question.
truly the Japanese are far beyond anything that we can comprehend
i think the most challenging aspect of living in those apartments would be fighting the urge to blow my brains out. though given the style, perhaps dropping an anvil on myself would be more appropriate.
truly the Japanese are far beyond anything that we can comprehend
well they like to think they are, anyway.
This is interesting but you guys already posted about it back in 2007!
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/02/13/tokyo-eldercondos-de.html
We are all going to be having a "tentative relationship" with our environment soon, and it'll have nothing to do with silly wussbag architecture.