Guest
Koolhaas Houselife portrays one of the masterpieces of contemporary architecture. The film lets the viewer enter into the house’s daily intimacy through the stories and daily chores of Guadalupe Acedo, the housekeeper, and the other people who look after the building. Pungent, funny and touching. In 1998, the owner of the Maison à Bordeaux, who is wheelchair-bound as the result of an accident, commissioned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas to build him a dwelling of a very special kind – one that would be suited to the requirements of its disabled owner and yet at the same time represent the aesthetic standards of contemporary architecture. The result was a series of architectural and technical curiosities, such as, for example, the elevating platform via which each of the three floors can be accessed, or the ‘joystick’, an illuminated, slightly phallic plastic lever which serves as a door opener but unfortunately gave up the ghost at the time the film was made. On her way past, Guadalupe shakes her head in disapproval. And from time to time, we hear her mutter: “If I had a lot of money, I wouldn’t buy a house like this one.” This time we are not dealing with the stylised, tidy photos which are intended to introduce the observer in a refined aesthetic manner to apparently unoccupied houses. Instead, it is the charming Guadalupe who squeezes through the narrow stairways with her vacuum cleaner and through whose eyes we get to know this architectural icon with all its fascinations and peculiarities. However, in spite of many amusing moments, the Koolhaas Houselife documentary isn’t a parody. The film derives its humorous scenes more from the impact which results when two worlds collide with each other – a conflict which is displayed without comment. Rem Koolhaas was clearly surprised by Guadalupe’s view of the house: “You can observe the collision here between two systems: the system of the platonic conception of house cleaning, and the system of the platonic conception of architecture.”
