Thursday, April 10, 2008

Dead Ahead?

I wonder how many hips will be broken before they close THIS JOINT?

They say that when you lose your sense of balance, you never quite know vertigo.
But never fear, old people! We're going to help you escape death by making you crawl on undulating concrete floors for up to 4 months so that you don't suffer the fatal blow of a last breath.

According to the architects: "All of it is meant to keep the occupants on guard. Comfort, the thinking goes, is a precursor to death; the house is meant to lead its users into a perpetually 'tentative' relationship with their surroundings, and thereby keep them young."

no. No. NO. Tentative relationships to your surroundings happen when you're camping, although I admit they can be in-tents. If you want to perpetually live life on the edge, build a normal home on a cliff.

I'm sure there'll be grim reaper-cussions for this type of architectural mockery, and the architects will get theirs in the end.

3 comments:

"Father Barry" said...

I found myself confused by the notion that "comfort is a precursor of death." My experience has always been that death makes folks like this uncomfortable.

But the need to "push the envelope" does seem consistant with the way many "artists" view their "art." Somewhere, it has moved from the realm of the beautiful into that of "the edgy."

Can't say I'm a fan of that switch.

The Vitruvian Duck said...

The cutting edge dulls quickly.

Ignoramus said...

Fr. Barry,

For a wonderful critique of that switch, see this famous essay by T.S. Eliot:

http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw4.html