The Reversible Destiny Lofts MITAKA – In Memory of Helen Keller – built by Arakawa and Madeline Gins in 2005, were the first residential works of “procedural architecture” designed with immortality in mind. These units are now used as rental housing and also host educational and cultural programs.
Reversible Destiny Lofts Technical Information
- Architects: Madeline Gins and Shusaku Arakawa, in collaboration with Yasui Architects & Engineers, Inc.
- Location: Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan
- Program: Housing – Nine Residential Apartments (two unit types)
- Size: Total Area 6,300 sq ft / 585 m2
- Structural Engineer: Takenaka Corporation
- Project year: 2005
- Foundation: Reversible Destiny Lofts MITAKA
Most people, in choosing a new home, look for comfort: a serene atmosphere, smooth walls and floors, a logical layout. Nonsense. People, particularly old people, shouldn’t relax and sit back to help them decline. They should be in an environment that stimulates their senses and invigorates their lives.
– Shusaku Arakawa
Reversible Destiny Lofts article
To provide some background on the artists/architects/poets, Arakawa and Gins founded the Architectural Body Research Foundation, which actively collaborates with a multidisciplinary team of practitioners studying experimental biology, neuroscience, quantum physics, experimental phenomenology, and medicine.
Do you want to live in an apartment or house that can help you determine the nature and extent of interactions between you and the universe?
– Shusaku Arakawa
This is one of many big questions posed by Reversible Destiny, a foundation established to extend the human lifespan via architectural design.
Interior of the Reversible Destiny Lofts
Colorful Interiors
Blue Bubble
The lofts have spherical rooms, undulating concrete floors riddled with bumps, and candy-colored walls. Poles and ladders run from floor to ceiling in unexpected places, and electrical outlets dangle from above. Each apartment resembles a playground designed without regard for child safety regulations. The lofts have spherical rooms, undulating concrete floors riddled with bumps, and candy-colored walls. Poles and ladders run from floor to ceiling in unexpected places, and electrical outlets dangle from above. Each apartment resembles a playground designed without regard for child safety regulations.
1. As you step into this unit fully believe you are walking into your own immune system.
2. Treat each room as if it were you yourself, as if it were a direct extension of you.
– 2 of the 22 instructions belonging to the Directions For Use of the Reversible Destiny Lofts
The Reversible Destiny Lofts—In Memory of Helen Keller are the first permanently habitable works of procedural architecture, realized in pre-cast concrete, reinforced concrete, and steel frame construction. The diverse color palette woven throughout the structure has inspired the Japanese novelist Setouchi Jakuchou to refer to the building as an “ultra chromatic undying house.”
“These lofts make vivid to their residents the operative tendencies and coordinating skills essential to and determinative of human thought and behavior, which means to say, they manage, by how they are constructed, to reveal to their residents the ins and outs of what makes a person tick.”
“By how it is constructed, through how its elements and features are juxtaposed, the Reversible Destiny Lofts – Mitaka (In Memory of Helen Keller) invites positive and constructive action. What could be more optimistic and constructive than a living space that, in every way, both prods and coaxes its residents to continue living for an indefinitely long period?! That is what the term reversible destiny signals loudly and clearly. Each reversible destiny loft has structured into it the capacity to help residents live long and great lives.”
Kitchen of the Reversible Destiny Lofts
Living Room of the Reversible Destiny Lofts
Floor Textures
Hanging furniture
As there is only a few flat ground to accommodate ordinary furniture and stock wares, once moving in, a new resident is soon to find that (s)he is provided, with Arakawa and Gins’s grace, with countless eyebolts on the ceiling instead, which encourage to use the ceiling as a new ground to put your staff on.
Structure of the building
Floor Plan
Shape = Structure
There are no interior columns; the whole room is big pillars.
About Arakawa and Gins
Madeline Helen Arakawa Gins (1941 – 2014) was an American artist, architect, and poet.
Shusaku Arakawa (1936 – 2010) was a Japanese artist and architect. He had a personal and artistic partnership with writer and artist Madeline Gins that spanned more than four decades.
Beginning in 1963, they collaborated on the research project The Mechanism of Meaning, which was completed by 1973. This research project and the architectural projects that stem from it, both built and unbuilt ones, formed the basis of the 1997 Arakawa + Gins: Reversible Destiny exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum SoHo.
The panels appear as a constellation of views concerning the nature of meaning that made be characterized in broad stroke as “holistic” or as entailments of a holistic view concerning meaning.
Other works from Arakawa & Gins
I visited both Yoro park and RD Lofts. They are amazing in architecture and concept. I wish their neighborhood plans come to life.
Thank you sharing your experience with us, Tom. I agree that they are truly amazing.
I hope that the plans for these neighborhoods will be realized in the future and provide even more opportunities for people to enjoy great architecture and design.
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