This documentary is about Guadalupe Acedo’s chores. Guadalupe is the housekeeper in charge of a modern home designed by Rem Koolhaas.
Guadalupe airing out the house
La Maison à Bordeaux is a home situated high atop a hill outside Bordeaux, France. It was built in 1994 and was commissioned by a family whose father had been handicapped as a result of an accident. They choose Rem Koolhas to carry out the project, and they also asked him to design a complicated house.
The reputable architect surprised them by presenting a 3-story home with easy wheelchair access to all three stories.
However, the documentary Koolhaas House Life is not about the home’s structure. Neither does it focus on Koolhas’ ideas for designing this type of home. The documentary’s strong point is the home’s upkeep and cleaning. The camera enters the home through the eyes of its housekeeper, Guadalupe Acedo, the woman who cleans the home and keeps it running smoothly. This results in an unusual and unpredictable view of the building’s spaces and structures.
The documentary was shot with a reality-show aesthetic, following Guadalupe’s every move inside the house. This allows the spectator to enter the invisible bubble of day-to-day private life within an architectural icon. Koolhaas HouseLife is a documentary-book created by two experts in contemporary architecture: Ila Bêka, architect, director, and video artist, and Louise Lemoîne, a screenwriter with a degree in Philosophy and Cinema from Soborne University.
The heart of the house is a platform lift with no walls that is about the size of a room (3m x 3.5m) and connects all three stories. What does Guadalupe think of this elevator? Does she consider it practical to go up that slowly, or would she prefer a good old trusty staircase?
You’ll have to watch the documentary to see what she thinks. In the meantime, you can watch a trailer:
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Guadalupe airing out the house
