Shusaku Arakawa is, according to the Japan Times Online, "an internationally acclaimed award-winning painter-turned-architectural-designer". Gosh. While most of the modern condos being built in Japan are universally accessible, Arukawa believes that such buildings are not only lifeless, but actually harmful. They feature too many straight lines and flat planes which don't exist in nature, apparently.

So, to redress the balance, Arakawa is all for, er, "architecture that defies death". By designing buildings which incorporate inconveniences and obstacles, he believes he can bring people's sensory perceptions back to life. (Which sounds as though his buildings will miraculously enable blind people to see and deaf people to hear, although that's probably not really what he's getting at.)

His latest work (snappily entitled, "Reversible Destiny Lofts Mitaka in memory of Helen Keller") is a nine unit condominium on the outskirts of Tokyo, which symbolises his mission to create "an apparatus through which we bring our life closer to eternity". Hmm. Deliberately-installed barriers include light switches at ankle height (that'd be Lady Bracknell living in the dark, then); ball-shaped studies with insufficient flat space to install a desk; bumpy floors which slope at a 20 degree angle; and a series of hooks in the ceiling, accessible by means of a narrow ladder, which are intended to serve the purpose of a wardrobe.

Those of us who really do need our floors to be both flat and level needn't worry too much, though. While most condos in Japan are sold before construction has even started, only one of Arakawa's dream spaces has been bought so far. By a group of the project's sponsors . . .

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