A fun house for eternity
Daniel Libeskind loves slanted walls. Frank Gehry favors curvy exteriors. Those proclivities seem tamed compared to Madeline Gins and Arakawa penchant for curved floors. Gins and Arakawa — a married couple who produce art and architecture together — believe that death is avoidable through a process known as "reversible destiny." Reversible destiny can be achieved, they believe, by keeping people off-balance, focused on life and ageless. "It's immoral that people have to die," Gins told a New York Times reporter.

Few Gins/Arakawa projects have been completed. Exceptions include apartments in Mitaka, Japan and an unoccupied house in Long Island, New York (above, with photo by Eric Striffler). The article also quotes Lawrence Marek, a New York architect, as saying that, "Arakawa does believe that if you build things the way he says to build them, life will be prolonged. I don't know if it will or not." But, he added, "the house has a way of making people happy — it's a feeling you don't get from many buildings — and we should be studying how that happens."

The Times website includes an audio slideshow that's worth watching.

Oh, and don't miss the Gins/Arawka website. It's totally weird, cool, I'm not sure what to make of it. When your browser lands on its homepage, you'll encounter these words:

"ARCHITECTURE AGAINST DEATH.

REVERSIBLE DESTINY.

WE HAVE DECIDED NOT TO DIE."

People who use all capital letters make me nervous.