Last night, as Christopher Hawthorne reported for the LA Times, the Hammer Museum played “Koolhaas Houselife”, a comical and witty documentary by Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoîne that follows Guadalupe Acedo, the cleaning woman, as she maintains the 1998 masterpiece.
Although architects, designers and engineers may look at the House of Bordeaux and admire its dramatic cantilever, the conceptually thrilling idea of the central lift for the handicapped client, and the circular windows that vary in size and placement according to the heights of the different residents, what is it like to occupy that space on a daily basis? After all, it is a house, and what is it like to do some of the most basic chores in an award winning building?
