[ExI] Transhumanist architects taken in by Madoff (WSJ)

[Christopher Whipple]

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/24/artists-who-design-i.html

[Arakawa and Madeline Gins'] work based loosely on a movement known as
"transhumanism," is premised on the idea that people degenerate and
die in part because they live in spaces that are too comfortable. The
artists' solution: construct abodes that leave people disoriented,
challenged and feeling anything but comfortable.

They build buildings with no doors inside. They place rooms far apart.
They put windows near the ceiling or near the floor. Between rooms are
sloping, bumpy moonscape-like floors designed to throw occupants off
balance. These features, they argue, stimulate the body and mind, thus
prolonging life. 'You become like a baby,' says Mr. Arakawa... A
typical apartment has three or four rooms in the shapes of either a
cylinder, a cube, or a sphere. Rooms surround a kitchen-living room
combination with bumpy, undulating floors and floor-to-ceiling ladders
and poles. Dozens of colors, from school-bus yellow to sky blue, cover
the walls, ceilings and other surfaces.

....

Death caused, in part, by comfort.  That's a new one for me.

-c.