Architecture Here and There

Rem Koolhaas designed a house for a rich client handicapped in an automobile accident. The house features a central core of a round platform/elevator open to the floors around it. Ada Louise Huxtable has written a review of a film about the house that is a classic in the genre of the unintentionally hilarious essay, written with a sort of stage-managed "honesty," about the wonders of modern architecture in spite of all its impracticalities.

The movie pits the house against its long-suffering maid. She fights the house to a draw, Huxtable says, but only by deploying all of her wit to devise methods of overcoming its absurdity - including torrential leaks. (Would it be too cruel to ask how much this house cost to build? Huxtable isn't saying.)

Her essay, in today's (Sept. 30) Wall Street Journal, begins: "Koolhaas Houselife is a small, smart, gently ironic, thoroughly delightful film that offers an affectionate but unflinching look at the everyday life of a contemporary architectural masterpiece - or what happens to a celebrated building after the photographers are gone" - and when the "photoshoppers" are gone, an admission that invites whole new realms of contemplation.

The essay is a barrel of laughs in its own right, but it also links to the film's Web site, which contains three short trailers for the movie. They are worth the price of admission (free). The first two trailers show the platform going up or down against a backdrop of the client's bookcase. The trailers are artfully done, backgrounded by Strauss. Alas, neither shows the allegedly splendid view from the glassy house, in France, of the Bordeaux countryside.

In the second, a flat-screen television slowly moves down as the elevator slowly moves up. Showing as the TV goes by is a clip from ... what? A Jacques Tati film? The first two trailers seem almost to mimic the French auteur. Either Tati or Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

(Anyone who can identify the clip, please let me know.)

The third trailer is a very short clip of Koolhaas bloviating about the clash of his house and reality. His lack of self-awareness is hilarious. Fun in the kook house indeed.

 Tags  Ada Louise Huxtable architecture Jacques Tati modernism Rem Koolhaas Wall Street Journal

Leave a comment

Name:

Email:

URL:  

Remember personal info?

Captcha:

Type the characters you see in the picture above.