Book of the Week
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