Shusaku Arakawa
The Site of Reversible Destiny - Yoro Park
- ArtistShusaku Arakawa
- Photographer© 1997 Reversible Destiny Foundation. Reproduced with permission of the Reversible Destiny Foundation
nouseskou The Site of Reversible Destiny invites the body to lose balance in order to rediscover awareness. Through unstable ground and disoriented space, Arakawa asks how perception shapes the act of living itself. His vision expands art into a field where architecture, philosophy, and existence converge - a reminder that to live is to continuously reawaken to the world.
Reversing Perception
At the heart of Yoro Park in Gifu Prefecture lies The Site of Reversible Destiny - a landscape conceived by artists and architects Arakawa Shusaku and Madeline Gins. Opened in 1995, the site invites visitors into a world where perception and balance are constantly in flux. Through uneven planes, tilted surfaces, and vividly coloured pavilions, Arakawa and Gins propose a radical idea: that by altering the body’s relationship to space, we might alter consciousness itself - and, in their words, “reverse our destinies.”
Architecture as Experiment
The site unfolds as a living laboratory of form and experience. Within the Reversible Destiny Office and Critical Resemblance House, visitors navigate mirrored ceilings, mazes that split through furniture, and landscapes shaped by the contours of Japan itself. Across the "Elliptical Field", architectural fragments with names like "Exactitude Ridge" and Zone of "Clearest Confusion" punctuate the terrain - 148 winding paths guiding movement and disorientation in equal measure. The architecture refuses passivity; it demands participation.
A Landscape in Flux
Designed in dialogue with its natural surroundings, The Site of Reversible Destiny transforms with the seasons. Twenty-four varieties of herbs mark the passing of time, their scent and colour shifting the atmosphere of the park. As light changes over the foothills, each structure takes on new meaning - neither ruin nor monument, but a field of potential. Here, art, architecture, and nature converge in a continuous experiment in being alive.
Credit
Artist: Arakawa and Madeline Gins
Title: Site of Reversible Destiny-Yoro Park
Date of Creation: 1993-95
Medium: public park
Dimensions: 195,000 sq. ft. (18,100 m2)
Location: Yoro, Gifu Prefecture, Japan.
Photo courtesy: Site of Reversible Destiny Yoro Park
Credit line: © 1997 Reversible Destiny Foundation. Reproduced with permission of the Reversible Destiny Foundation