H
ow would you like to own a house that will make you
live forever? Believe it or not, it’s possible — or at
least, somebody was convinced it was. In 1999, avant-
garde artist couple Madeline Gins and Arakawa
designed the Bioscleave House, or ‘Lifespan
Extending Villa’, in New York’s East Hampton, based on their belief
in “reversible destiny”. The design of this four-bedroom house —
completed in 2008 and currently on the market for US$2,495,000
— was inspired by the idea that creating an environment
that stimulates the senses, challenges your perceptions and
surprises you every day would energise, invigorate and boost the
immune system, keeping anyone who dwells there young and
healthy throughout their lives.
So how did this idea translate? Bioscleave’s interior looks like
a combination of funhouse and children’s playground, and its
intention is deliberately to disorientate. It’s a riot of cartoon colours,
lumpy earthen floors and off-kilter windows, with poles placed
throughout to grab for balance. It’s like the Flintstones house got
a yabba-dabba-do makeover by Pop artist Kenny Scharf.
Gins and Arakawa did not live forever (both died in their early 70s),
and by all accounts no one has ever actually inhabited the house.
But the couple was definitely onto something. The fact that your
living environment can impact your brain and body is a notion that
scientists and architects are seriously starting to embrace. The
terminology has been kicking around for a while now — wellbeing
architecture, neuro-architecture, evidence-based people-centric
design — but make no mistake, this thinking is definitively next-
gen. Sustainable practices like using environmentally friendly
materials and energy-efficient technologies are still fabulous,
of course, and an integral part of the design future, but the primary
focus has shifted to people, and its driving force is brain science.The embers of this movement lie in research done by pioneering
and visionary researchers. In the mid-20th century, US sociology
professor Aaron Antonovsky wrote extensively on the concept of
salutogenics, the relationships between health, stress and coping.
In 1984, Sweden-based architecture professor Roger Ulrich
published the landmark study ‘View Through a Window May
Influence Recovery From Surgery’, which was one of the first to
examine the impact of the healing powers of nature. And decades of
analysis by US environmental psychologists Rachel and Stephen
Kaplan has shown that the connection between the environment
and people’s health, both mental and physical, is very real indeed.
One major homegrown advocate of this new thinking is Kristen
Whittle, director of the Melbourne-based Bates Smart architecture
firm. A design architect at the Tate Modern in London back in
the ’90s, he was struck by The Weather Project installation in the
enormous Turbine Hall by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson
in 2003. It was a blazing artificial sun, comprising hundreds of
monofrequency lamps, burning through a fine mist that permeated
the whole area. “Families would go in and end up lying down on the
concrete floor believing they were looking at the sunset,” Whittle
ma r vels. “Even t houg h it wa s a n i ndu st r ia l ised spa c e , it t ra n sfor med
into a naturalised environment — it became a kind of beach.”
Whittle’s interest in the way our bodies are wired to react to the
environment around us was piqued, so he started to read up on
research studies about the impact light and views into gardens has
on people’s health. And when Bates Smart won the bid in 2007 to
build Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital, as its lead design
architect, he immersed himself in those ideas. “As human beings,
when we need to relax and engage at the same time, we go for
a walk in a park,” Whittle says. “There’s a natural flow of energy that
fulfils us and replenishes our energy. The Attention Restoration ››The science of design
Combining aesthetics with research, neuro-architecture is the next frontier. By Bonnie Vaughan
36 vogueliving.com.auVL