Applying their keen eyes to architecture’s everyday use, filmmakers Ila Bęka and Louise Lemoine create intimate portraits of iconic contemporary buildings, giving backstage access to their inner lives and hidden workings. This was recently epitomized by their celebrated documentary, Koolhaas HouseLife, which received its UK Premiere as the opening film of the London Architecture Foundation's Architecture on Film series of screenings and was part of the exhibition "On Mock-ups, Home Videos and Housekeeping: a video exhibition in three parts" at Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York.
In a new transatlantic exhibition of Bęka and Lemoine's ongoing research into architecture as living form, parallel video installations will be presented at London's Architecture Foundation and New York’s Storefront for Art and Architecture. The films depict the human occupations of Richard Meier’s Church in Rome, Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao, and Herzog and de Meuron’s Pomerol winery, alongside further footage of Koolhaas’s Maison ŕ Bordeaux.
Seen through the lens of Bęka and Lemoine’s camera, architecture appears engaged in constant dialogue with its users, from line-dancing grape-pickers to abseiling window cleaners. Architecture is seen as an experience, in other words, rather than as an image.
