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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2011 > February > 21 > Entry
At Arthouse, the ‘Rooftop Architecture Series’ begins
Arthouse presents the first in a series of film screenings about architecture Wednesday night with “Koolhaas Houselife” screened on the sleek roof deck of the Congress Avenue contemporary arts center.
Filmmakers Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine will be on hand Wednesday to answer questions after the showing of their 2008 documentary that unveils a day in the life of an extraordinary house designed by famed “starchitect” Rem Koolhaas.
Koolhaas was commissioned by a wealthy newspaper editor, Jean-Francois Lemoine, to build a country house in the Bordeaux region. The home needed to accommodate the special circumstances of Lemoine, who had recently begun using a wheelchair as a result of a car accident.
A rectangular. three-level. flat-roofed structure finished in 1998, the Bordeaux House — already a French national monument — is one of the few that high-style architects such as Koolhaas have built that address the specific needs of the disabled. And yet the architect’s charge was to design something his client found inspired, surprising and wholly unlike any other home for a disabled person.
Co-directed by Lemoine’s daughter, “Koolhaas Houselife” is far from a typical architecture documentary. Instead of a dutiful progression, the 58-minute film unveils the Bordeaux House via 24 brief segments separated by short blackouts. Leading us through the experience of the house is Lemoine’s middle-aged Spanish housekeeper, Guadalupe Acedo, the unlikely central figure of the film. Acedo’s commentary forms the narrative thread as she goes about her routine of cleaning the home, now mostly unoccupied after Lemoine’s death in 2001.
Koolhaas’ design combines opposites that represent the tricky dualism of his client’s wishes for a specifically functioning house that didn’t show its specifics. Empty and full spaces collide; shapes and forms are both introverted and extroverted. And in the end, Bordeaux House — like the film that’s brought it to a wider public — is both brilliant and totally idiosyncratic.
Rooftop Architecture Series: ‘Koolhaas Houselife”
7 p.m. Wednesday (rooftop lounge opens at 5:30 p.m.)
Arthouse, 700 Congress Ave.
$10
www.arthousetexas.org
Image: Still from “Koolhaas Houselife”
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