One of the highlights of Boule to Braid, the excellent show curated by Richard Wentworth currently showing at London’s Lisson Gallery, is Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoîne’s film Koolhaas Houselife.  Set in Rem Koolhaas‘ ”Maison à Bordeaux”, completed in 1998, the camera follows the villa’s live-in housekeeper and an assortment of maintenance men as they clean and repair the house and its amenities. This icon of contemporary architecture is seen through the eyes of those who work on it.

Part of what makes the film so engaging is that it sets so many different thoughts in motion.  Much of this has to do with many of the contradictions that emerge throughout the film.  The contradiction between the housekeeper’s quite ordinary, and quite messy, room and the luxurious home she spends her days cleaning; the contradiction between order and chaos, sterility and vitality; the contradiction between, as Koolhaas himself puts it in an interview on the film’s website, “the system of the platonic conception of cleaning” and “the platonic conception of architecture”; and the contradiction between functionality and aesthetics.

In relation to this last contradiction, like Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle (1958), and perhaps also his magisterial Playtime (1968), a case could be made for Koolhaas Houselife taking a reactionary position to modern architecture in the sense that the building’s various contraptions, ostensibly there to make its residents’ lives easier, end up requiring a team of technicians and caretakers to keep them functioning barely a decade into the house’s existence.  Instead, as with the later film’s of Tati, it is preferable to read the film as a defense of these buildings in its demonstration of the humor, vitality, and creativity exuded by the villa’s residents, technicians, and cleaners, as well as its architect.

The film will be at Lisson until August 15th, and can be bought on DVD together with a book on the film’s website.