A new film focuses on the life of a home designed by architect Rem Koolhaas for a client in a wheelchair, which radically redefines domestic living, and the results of the experiment when put to actual use.
Famed architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable brings us this review of the film "Koolhaas Houselife."
"What we are really talking about are two houses: the one with the buffed and polished public image, dramatically photographed and perfectly photoshopped, ready for a fashion shoot on an ideal day; and the house where people live and deal with the paradox of a building that exhilarates and breaks down in equal measure. It is this latter house that the film explores from the point of view of those who use and maintain it. And it is the gap between the conceptual and the actual, how architecture intersects with a world unprepared to cope with the unusual demands of a work of art, that is its deeper and more significant theme, something glossed over or carefully avoided by the architectural establishment because acknowledging the disconnect might somehow deny or distract from the creative act."
FULL STORY: Ingenious and Demanding
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City of Albany
UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
City of Piedmont, CA
Great Falls Development Authority, Inc.
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research