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Koolhaas Houselife

Ila Beka & Louise Lemoine

 Book and DVD

Ila Beka & Louise Lemoine present a short, but refined book and a dvd of “Living Architectures”. Presenting a variety of architectural masterpieces

portrayed through the depiction of their daily life.

As a sample, Koolhaas Houselife looks at a great Koolhaas Villa in Bourdeaux through the eyes of its maid. The book really talks about two houses: the one with the buffed

and polished public image, dramatically photographed and ready

for a fashion shoot on an ideal day where people live and the point of view

of those who use and maintain it.

And it is this the gap between the conceptual and the actual, how the architecture intersects and copes with the demands of its inhabitants that Beka and Lemoine address. We see the daily cleaning routine and hear the humorous commentary of the housekeeper, her observations ending with

“Well, it’s different, you know, it’s not the same thing..”;

an impartial opinion which, as she herself insists, “reflects the tastes of others”.  You also meet the “House doc”, the specialist who finds solutions

in record time to dysfunctions and deterioration in the stunning

but eccentric prototype mechanisms.

A witty and unorthodox point of view in both the video and the book emphasize the “body” of the structure and the relationship between

the human body and these fabulous architectural environments.

Koolhaas Houselife

Ila Beka & Louise Lemoine

Book and DVD, 37 min multilingual

67 pp., 23 x 20 cm, 42 euro

Published by Bekapartners

Order online from 10 Corso Como Bookshop