What do you think?
Rate this book
Architectural Body
A verbal articulation of the authors' visionary theory of how the human body, architecture, and creativity define and sustain one another
This revolutionary work by artist-architects Arakawa and Madeline Gins demonstrates the inter-connectedness of innovative architectural design, the poetic process, and philosophical inquiry. Together, they have created an experimental and widely admired body of work--museum installations, landscape and park commissions, home and office designs, avant-garde films, poetry collections--that challenges traditional notions about the built environment. This book promotes a deliberate use of architecture and design in dealing with the blight of the human condition; it recommends that people seek architectural and aesthetic solutions to the dilemma of mortality.
In 1997 the Guggenheim Museum presented an Arakawa/Gins retrospective and published a comprehensive volume of their work titled Reversible We Have Decided Not to Die. Architectural Body continues the philosophical definition of that project and demands a fundamental rethinking of the terms “human” and “being.” When organisms assume full responsibility for inventing themselves, where they live and how they live will merge. The artists believe that a thorough re-visioning of architecture will redefine life and its limitations and render death passe. The authors explain that “Another way to read reversible destiny . . . Is as an open challenge to our species to reinvent itself and to desist from foreclosing on any possibility.”
Audacious and liberating, this volume will be of interest to students and scholars of 20th-century poetry, postmodern critical theory, conceptual art and architecture, contemporary avant-garde poetics, and to serious readers interested in architecture's influence on imaginative expression.
This revolutionary work by artist-architects Arakawa and Madeline Gins demonstrates the inter-connectedness of innovative architectural design, the poetic process, and philosophical inquiry. Together, they have created an experimental and widely admired body of work--museum installations, landscape and park commissions, home and office designs, avant-garde films, poetry collections--that challenges traditional notions about the built environment. This book promotes a deliberate use of architecture and design in dealing with the blight of the human condition; it recommends that people seek architectural and aesthetic solutions to the dilemma of mortality.
In 1997 the Guggenheim Museum presented an Arakawa/Gins retrospective and published a comprehensive volume of their work titled Reversible We Have Decided Not to Die. Architectural Body continues the philosophical definition of that project and demands a fundamental rethinking of the terms “human” and “being.” When organisms assume full responsibility for inventing themselves, where they live and how they live will merge. The artists believe that a thorough re-visioning of architecture will redefine life and its limitations and render death passe. The authors explain that “Another way to read reversible destiny . . . Is as an open challenge to our species to reinvent itself and to desist from foreclosing on any possibility.”
Audacious and liberating, this volume will be of interest to students and scholars of 20th-century poetry, postmodern critical theory, conceptual art and architecture, contemporary avant-garde poetics, and to serious readers interested in architecture's influence on imaginative expression.
128 pages, Paperback
First published September 25, 2002
8 people are currently reading
162 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 27, 2019
To be honest this manifesto is way over my head.
Gins and Arakawa's work is very original and quite polemical -they design and build spaces which confound your expectations of what floors, walls and other elements of a house are, forcing you to pay attention to where and how you move. They claim -with no evidence mentioned at least on this manifesto- that forcing you out of "automatic modes" helps you live longer and is a step towards what they call "reversible destiny".
An interesting glimpse of an iconoclast house and a loft built to their design can be found on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92ppy... $2 million house 'staves off death' or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY8zk... (Arakawa And Gins: Eluding Death By Design In A Tokyo Loft | The Daily 360 | The New York Times).
Possibly of interest to designers , architects and students of these disciplines who appreciate thinking outside the box and are able to make sense of a postmodernist writing style...
Gins and Arakawa's work is very original and quite polemical -they design and build spaces which confound your expectations of what floors, walls and other elements of a house are, forcing you to pay attention to where and how you move. They claim -with no evidence mentioned at least on this manifesto- that forcing you out of "automatic modes" helps you live longer and is a step towards what they call "reversible destiny".
An interesting glimpse of an iconoclast house and a loft built to their design can be found on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92ppy... $2 million house 'staves off death' or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY8zk... (Arakawa And Gins: Eluding Death By Design In A Tokyo Loft | The Daily 360 | The New York Times).
Possibly of interest to designers , architects and students of these disciplines who appreciate thinking outside the box and are able to make sense of a postmodernist writing style...
Read
February 4, 2023This is perhaps the only book that has truly become a part of me and the way I conduct my existence. I read it again to refresh my understanding and to see if it still means as much to me as it did a few years ago. What I'm most surprised about is how well I understood it the first time. I thought this reread might elucidate a deeper meaning but if anything it has made me feel like I understand it less now. To be fair, last time I studied it and wrote about it and made art about it, and this time I just read it while riding trains or drinking coffee.
The book is unquestionably rigorous, but I wish there was more referencing to other literature. It can feel kind of lonely reading so many meticulously expressed hypotheses with no outside voice. I find myself latching on to anything they do give me, like the compelling quote from The Rights of Infants on page 83.
I wonder about the sense of urgency, and of life changing importance they place on their hypotheses. What is the purpose of talking about them with such severity? Do they truly feel like they have no choice but to write in this light, or do they have some motive? As the sense of the sublime I felt the first time I read it has faded, I find myself questioning this tone.
The book is unquestionably rigorous, but I wish there was more referencing to other literature. It can feel kind of lonely reading so many meticulously expressed hypotheses with no outside voice. I find myself latching on to anything they do give me, like the compelling quote from The Rights of Infants on page 83.
I wonder about the sense of urgency, and of life changing importance they place on their hypotheses. What is the purpose of talking about them with such severity? Do they truly feel like they have no choice but to write in this light, or do they have some motive? As the sense of the sublime I felt the first time I read it has faded, I find myself questioning this tone.
January 6, 2014
I want to live in their heads.
April 6, 2020
I read this for work (I'm Madeline and Arakawa's archivist) and I can't say I enjoyed the experience exactly, but it was definitely clarifying.
My favorite thing about it though was its wit. Although they were serious about their philosophy, there are sections of this where they were clearly having fun explaining it.
My favorite thing about it though was its wit. Although they were serious about their philosophy, there are sections of this where they were clearly having fun explaining it.
Read
December 31, 2020Weird little book. Can’t say I enjoyed it much. Maybe need to see more of Gins and Arakawa creations to grasp it better.
November 4, 2021
This book is like visualising a hypercube while driving.
November 11, 2021
Feel like the Futurists and Gins/Arakawa would really get along.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews