Live dangerously, live long!
Apr. 24th, 2007 10:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomus16. I'm watching CNN. It has a feature about Japan's elderly boomers. The film crew visits the Reversible Destiny Lofts in Mitaka, designed (by Shusaku Arakawa and Madeline Gins) to keep the people who live there on their toes.
7. In the Reversible Destiny Lofts, your destiny might reverse at any moment. You're aware you might slip. The floor isn't level, the light switches have been hidden, you have to crawl onto the balcony through a low door. It's like an adventure playground or an assault course.
2. Arakawa and Gins have also designed a theme park, Reversible Destiny Yoro Park. There are buildings shaped like maps, furniture on the ceiling of a maze, mounds and hollows to clamber over.
22. "Because the Site of Reversible Destiny-Yoro Park has many steep slopes, we advise that you wear rubber-heeled shoes."
3. Arakawa and Gins also have plans for a Reversible Destiny Hotel (the New York one is illustrated between bullet 16 and bullet 7. The bullets are out of sequence to keep you alert and alive. Bang! Bang!).
15. Arakawa says: "You'll learn to figure it out... The apartment makes you alert and awakens instincts, so you'll live better, longer and even forever." Wow! Live dangerously, live forever!
19. From a blog conversation about the Reversible Destiny concept:
A: "See? Being perpetually irritated will make you fucking immortal."
B: "For a second I thought I was reading imomus and you were being completely serious."
6. What could possibly make A and B think I'd take this stuff seriously? Well, maybe my essays about ostranenie and disorienteering. I'm always going on about how great it is to get lost, with quotes from the Situationists and so on.
4. See, I totally understand why Alin Huma would sleep out on his balcony one night, as if he were camping up on a mountain, and the freeway below were a stream in a crevasse, the Dentsu building opposite a crag. Habit, as Samuel Beckett put it, is a great deadener. Throwing people out of their habits is a way to keep them alive.
8. This obviously relates to what I was talking about in The energy of awkwardness the other day.
24. Had dinner the other night with a guy who was designing theme parks and zoos. We talked about crossing the road in Thailand. The secret is, he said, just to walk out into the traffic flow at a constant pace. The cars, bicycles and motorbikes will flow around you... as long as you pay no attention to them and just keep walking. I wish I'd known that when I was in Chiang Mai.
1. I responded with a description of the theories of Dutch traffic planner Hans Monderman, who's trying to make traffic safer by taking away all the signs and forcing drivers, pedestrians and other road users to look at and negotiate with each other, rather than obey signs.
9. Monderman redesigned the traffic flow in the Freisland city of Smallingerland. "Designing for negotiation requires the different users to "negotiate" the space they are about to occupy... Rather than zebra crossings, signs, lights, etc., Monderman strips the furniture from the streets - hence the term "naked streets" - making it easier for users to see and negotiate with one another. His goal is to enhance the conspicuousness and predictability of users, empowering them to cooperate with each another."
12. Aha! There we hit the paradox, or rather the dialectic. Unpredictable environments don't banish predictability, they force us to take responsibility for it ourselves. In Arakawa's buildings and Monderman's awkward square roundabouts, there's basically an existential message: act responsibly, act co-operatively, act socially. Don't assume that any institution or design is looking out for you. Do assume that people have a vested interest in getting on with each other, and that direct negotiation is the safest way for that to happen.
23. Monderman has some scandalous principles. Don't separate cars and pedestrians! Remove signs! Light everywhere, not just the road! Extend cafes right to the edge of the street, forcing more sharing of the space. Negotiate by eye contact! Eliminate raised curbs, just paint them instead!
13. I think someone else who's on this tip is Rem Koolhaas. His whole Learning from Lagos thing is anti-planning, pro-negotiation.
18. Today's Recursive Circle:
a. The way to live a long time is to stay safe. Safe is good!
b. No! The way to live a long time is to live dangerously. Dangerous is good!
c. In fact, negotiating danger is much safer than trying to eradicate it.
d. So it's "safety" that's truly dangerous. Safety is bad!
e. But our ultimate justification for the re-introduction of danger is that it keeps people safe.
f. So if living dangerously helps you live a long time, we're back to the original proposition: The way to live a long time is to stay safe.
7. In the Reversible Destiny Lofts, your destiny might reverse at any moment. You're aware you might slip. The floor isn't level, the light switches have been hidden, you have to crawl onto the balcony through a low door. It's like an adventure playground or an assault course.
2. Arakawa and Gins have also designed a theme park, Reversible Destiny Yoro Park. There are buildings shaped like maps, furniture on the ceiling of a maze, mounds and hollows to clamber over.
22. "Because the Site of Reversible Destiny-Yoro Park has many steep slopes, we advise that you wear rubber-heeled shoes."
3. Arakawa and Gins also have plans for a Reversible Destiny Hotel (the New York one is illustrated between bullet 16 and bullet 7. The bullets are out of sequence to keep you alert and alive. Bang! Bang!).
15. Arakawa says: "You'll learn to figure it out... The apartment makes you alert and awakens instincts, so you'll live better, longer and even forever." Wow! Live dangerously, live forever!
19. From a blog conversation about the Reversible Destiny concept:
A: "See? Being perpetually irritated will make you fucking immortal."
B: "For a second I thought I was reading imomus and you were being completely serious."
6. What could possibly make A and B think I'd take this stuff seriously? Well, maybe my essays about ostranenie and disorienteering. I'm always going on about how great it is to get lost, with quotes from the Situationists and so on.
4. See, I totally understand why Alin Huma would sleep out on his balcony one night, as if he were camping up on a mountain, and the freeway below were a stream in a crevasse, the Dentsu building opposite a crag. Habit, as Samuel Beckett put it, is a great deadener. Throwing people out of their habits is a way to keep them alive.
8. This obviously relates to what I was talking about in The energy of awkwardness the other day.
24. Had dinner the other night with a guy who was designing theme parks and zoos. We talked about crossing the road in Thailand. The secret is, he said, just to walk out into the traffic flow at a constant pace. The cars, bicycles and motorbikes will flow around you... as long as you pay no attention to them and just keep walking. I wish I'd known that when I was in Chiang Mai.
1. I responded with a description of the theories of Dutch traffic planner Hans Monderman, who's trying to make traffic safer by taking away all the signs and forcing drivers, pedestrians and other road users to look at and negotiate with each other, rather than obey signs.
9. Monderman redesigned the traffic flow in the Freisland city of Smallingerland. "Designing for negotiation requires the different users to "negotiate" the space they are about to occupy... Rather than zebra crossings, signs, lights, etc., Monderman strips the furniture from the streets - hence the term "naked streets" - making it easier for users to see and negotiate with one another. His goal is to enhance the conspicuousness and predictability of users, empowering them to cooperate with each another."
12. Aha! There we hit the paradox, or rather the dialectic. Unpredictable environments don't banish predictability, they force us to take responsibility for it ourselves. In Arakawa's buildings and Monderman's awkward square roundabouts, there's basically an existential message: act responsibly, act co-operatively, act socially. Don't assume that any institution or design is looking out for you. Do assume that people have a vested interest in getting on with each other, and that direct negotiation is the safest way for that to happen.
23. Monderman has some scandalous principles. Don't separate cars and pedestrians! Remove signs! Light everywhere, not just the road! Extend cafes right to the edge of the street, forcing more sharing of the space. Negotiate by eye contact! Eliminate raised curbs, just paint them instead!
13. I think someone else who's on this tip is Rem Koolhaas. His whole Learning from Lagos thing is anti-planning, pro-negotiation.
18. Today's Recursive Circle:
a. The way to live a long time is to stay safe. Safe is good!
b. No! The way to live a long time is to live dangerously. Dangerous is good!
c. In fact, negotiating danger is much safer than trying to eradicate it.
d. So it's "safety" that's truly dangerous. Safety is bad!
e. But our ultimate justification for the re-introduction of danger is that it keeps people safe.
f. So if living dangerously helps you live a long time, we're back to the original proposition: The way to live a long time is to stay safe.