My Mom’s greatest fear is losing her mind.  At least that’s the excuse she uses for the hours she spends playing video games and solving crosswords, acrostics and Sudokus.  She cites research showing that geezers who engage in such activities maintain sharper minds.  Hell, I’ll take her word for it since I enjoy wasting my time on such activities as much as she does.

It seems that a Japanese architect believes in helping old farts feel act more like young farts by designing condos that challenge them to stay on their toes.  The condos, pictured above, are described in this article thusly:

Most people, in choosing a new home, look for comfort: a serene
atmosphere, smooth walls and floors, a logical layout. Nonsense, says
Shusaku Arakawa, a Japanese artist based in New York. He and his
creative partner, poet Madeline Gins, recently unveiled a small
apartment complex in the Tokyo suburb of Mitaka that is anything but
comfortable and calming. "People, particularly old people, shouldn’t
relax and sit back to help them decline," he insists. "They should be
in an environment that stimulates their senses and invigorates their
lives."

With that in mind, Arakawa and Gins designed a building of nine
apartments known as Reversible Destiny Lofts. Painted in eye-catching
blue, pink, red, yellow and other bright colors, the building resembles
the indoor playgrounds that attract toddlers at fast-food restaurants.
Inside, each apartment features a dining room with a grainy, surfaced
floor that slopes erratically, a sunken kitchen and a study with a
concave floor. Electric switches are located in unexpected places on
the walls so you have to feel around for the right one. A glass door to
the veranda is so small you have to bend to crawl out. You constantly
lose balance and gather yourself up, grab onto a column and
occasionally trip and fall.

Even worse, there’s no closet space; residents will have to find a
way to live there, since the apartment offers only a few solutions.
"You’ll learn to figure it out," says Arakawa. Ten minutes of stumbling
around is enough to send even the healthiest young person over the
edge. Arakawa says that’s precisely the point. "[The apartment] makes
you alert and awakens instincts, so you’ll live better, longer and even
forever," says the artist.

If this concept takes off I think there’s a great business opportunity in opening an urgent care center in the lobby.