I think transhumanist architects will design better buildings if they are constantly dodging automatic weapons fire. This is because without hot lead flying at them constantly they become too comfortable with their environment and ideas. The gunfire will serve to stimulate the creative process and elevate their synergies outside the intramodal denkweise.

Just saying something does not make it so.

“The WSJ simply did a poor job of framing the story. Or maybe they were in on the prank.”

As a result, your post seems to mischaracterize the WSJ story, and also mischaracterize R.U.’s take on the story.

Nuclear bomb, land mines, ‘improved’ weapons, pollution, CCTV, phone tapping, … a few that come immediately to mind.

I’d really love to see the houses that Arakawa and Gins actually do live in. I’m willing to bet there’s no trippy floors.

Neither architectural design nor philosophy are science in any meaningful sense. They are “conceptual” principally because they made up the connection between odd buildings and long life.

I don’t know them, though I’ve read a bit here and there; they may well be “serious” about what they’re doing, but that hardly makes it meaningful or useful in the terms they’ve taken up.

Living in oddly designed buildings may or may not increase your lifespan ~ I couldn’t say; but neither can they, which makes them ‘wackos’ in the sense that they live their lives according to rules they made up to suit themselves.

I assume you wouldn’t accede to the notion that constantly being forced to communicate in dead languages (Anglo-Saxon is my personal preference) will help increase your life span by forcing you to constantly think outside your comfort zone. Yet that’s what this pair has done. At least my A/S plan has the benefit of scientific research that shows some level of puzzle/challenge thinking benefits mental acuity in old age.

Sheesh. Why people like this get press is beyond me.

Lanval

I can vouch for this. Our house was designed by a young architect who had some critically challenging ideas, and we have learned over the years that it does not in fact satisfy our needs for utility or longevity of building. However, it is useful to know that our needs for things like adequate lighting and ventilation and functioning doors are merely presupposed, and that the house is saving us from the horrors of death by too much comfort.

1. Sadly, humankind has many destructive traits.

2. These traits manifest themselves in many ways: War, Greed, Hatred, Opposing religions, Love… and so on.

3. Mankind has a need to strive as a psychological justification for their existence. The very act of struggling is in itself destructive in that there is a lot of energy required to do so.

4. Technology has been utilized by mankind for more harm than good. It has also been misused and under-used by the masses in many ways. Perhaps the simplest example being the existence of spelling and grammar checkers yet little apparent use of this.

5. Mankind (those with access to the technology) have an incredibly powerful tool in front of them yet choose it in many mindless ‘none productive” ways (social networking, mindless videos, game playing…).

The arrival of a ‘singularity’ or a transhuman, robotized intelligence would clearly look at someone swinging a nunchuck and dismiss them as a very basic form of life with little understanding of what it is to be intelligent. Simply compare our view of primates using simple tools to dig insects out of a tree branch. Additionally, they would see the disorder and chaos created by humankind and do everything possible to remove the threat to a stable environment.

Humankind would be viewed as irrelevant.

Clearly, someone designing ‘wonky’ buildings that have philosophical form over function would be viewed in a similar fashion.

Logic does not incorporate philosophy or beauty.

Pass the bong, please…

If I were independently wealthy, and could custom make furniture, I’d totally love to live there. Until I got to an age of frail-hips. Then the house would shorten your life, remarkably quickly I’d imagine.

I would conjecture that a ‘singularity’ type intelligence, arriving presumably from elsewhere in the universe (one emerging here as part of the exponentially exploding economic and technical upward curve we are currently seeing the benefits of would presumably be aware of the totality of human history) might mistake ‘functional’ buildings for nests.

I’m happy to learn that Arakawa is still alive and productive. He’s been working since the early sixties, and his paintings occasionally get reproduced in glossy art history books with little explanation. I’d like to see a retrospective.

I’m going to have to go ahead and disagree with you there.

Not all the time, from personal experience: when you’re falling from a height, when you’re (nearly) drowning, and sometimes when you’re perfectly ok and glad to be alive.

The proper way to parse it would be [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.

In other words, their work is based loosely on transhumanism and ALSO is premised on the idea, etc etc. Whereas you’re reading, their work is based loosly on transhumanisim, which is premised, etc. etc. But that’s not what they’re saying, although they could definitely have used somewhat clearer writing to clarify that point.

I’d say there are any number of people living on heating grates and in alleyways who must be downright immortal then.

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/02/13/tokyo-eldercondos-de.html

It seems to me that if you would WANT to live in a given house, then you are explicitly precluding the transhumanist doctrine not to live in a “comfortable” place.

So any transhuman who volunteers to live in a trans.etc. house would automatically become a non-trans.etc.

/bullcrap

Give me a break. =) It was a wacko idea to begin with.