What’ s the cost of a long life? This week, it’s $1.29 million.
The asking price of the Bioscleave House in East Hampton just plummeted $200,000, down from $1.49 million a couple weeks ago — and down from the $2.49 million it was going for when placed on the market last July. And way down from the 2011 asking price of $4 million.
The 2,700-square-foot home — which is adorned with some 40 different paint colors — was designed to purportedly increase its occupants’ longevity through bizarre elements: windows located at floor level, power outlets tilted at 45-degree angles and a cement floor molded into bumpy hills.
Completed in 2008 by husband-and-wife artists Shusaku Arakawa and Madeline Gins, the home promoted the couple’s belief in “reversible destiny.”
True or not — both Arakawa and Gins are deceased — sources note that the home’s layout is not only potentially unsafe, it also fails to deliver the high-end inclusions that well-heeled Hamptonites demand in a trophy home.
“It’s only going to be attractive to a certain segment of the buying population who likes eccentric … idiosyncratic houses,” said a longtime Hamptons real-estate broker. “That’s the bane of modern architecture.”
Arakawa and Gins’ philosophy against dying seems to stem from wartime anxiety. According to a 2016 story co-published by the Awl and Longreads, the nuclear threat of the 1960s Cold War first put Gins on edge with distress over her own mortality. Arakawa, who grew up in Nagoya, Japan, witnessed that city’s repeated firebombing during World War II. When the two met at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, they were reportedly near the breaking point over the “sad, terrifying” reality that they were moving toward death. After marrying at City Hall in 1965, they set out to create a better world — through painting, writing and, later, architecture — to achieve eternal life.
Bioscleave House is the first structural example of reversible destiny to be built in America. (The couple’s debut, inspired by Helen Keller and her triumph over disability, was a nine-unit complex near Tokyo.)
In 1998, a friend of Arakawa and Gins, Angela Gallman, commissioned them to construct Bioscleave House — an addition to her 900-square-foot home in East Hampton — as a laboratory for reversible destiny. (Gallman, who sold the home in 2007 to an anonymous LLC, could not be reached for comment.)
The Bioscleave House is designed to make residents actively navigate simple tasks to maintain equilibrium, which Arakawa and Gins believed would stimulate the immune system and promote longevity. One prominent example: that hilly concrete floor, which if not tread across with caution, could send a person tumbling into the sunken kitchen below. (Luckily, there are plenty of randomly placed floor-to-ceiling poles to grab onto.) Meanwhile, the dozens of bright colors, small windows and angled electrical outlets were intended to keep residents focused on their immediate environment — essentially, sharpening the senses.
“It is well-built. It is an artwork,” said JB DosSantos of Brown Harris Stevens, who brought the property to market.
As for Arakawa and Gins, a local physician shoots down their “reversible destiny” philosophy.
“From a scientific point of view, there’s no basis in what they’re saying,” said Dr. Ted Strange, a geriatrician affiliated with Staten Island University Hospital.
In 2010, when Arakawa was dying of ALS at age 73, Gins reportedly asked that his room be filled with images of their artworks. He passed away a week later. In 2014, Gins succumbed to cancer at age 72.
The pair had no children, and the Bioscleave House forms a big part of their legacy — much to the chagrin of locals.
“We dislike it,” said next-door neighbor Marc Boroditsky, 56. “It’s a disturbing deviation from the norm. I’m not saying everything needs to be normal — it’s just a dramatic difference from everything else that’s nearby.”