Maison a BordeauxRem Koolhaas, Office for Metropolitan Architecture.

Exterior Vs Interior

Architecture, Year 1

UCA Canterbury

nrawlings@ucrative.co.uk

Word Count: 1667

This essay will briefly explore the career of Rem Koolhaas, taking an in

depth investigation of the genre of his works, focusing particularly on

the key features and elements of the Maison De Bordeaux. Including the

failures of design within the interior spaces and how they contrast with

the successful exterior facades shown in the BekaFilms producation of

‘Koolhaas Houselife’. The house was designed for a gentleman with a

disability, who was sadly paralysed and left to live the rest of his life in a

wheel chair. This essay will look at in detail how Koolhaas took this into

consideration when producing a design, what barriers he had to

overcome and how he designed functional elements and kept them

aesthetically pleasing for the inhabitants. Paying particular attention to

access between spaces and levels.

Rem Koolhaas born in 1944 is an award winning Dutch architect, architectural

theorist, urbanist and Professor in practice of “Architecture and Urban Design”

at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, USA. Koolhaas

studied at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam, at the

Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and at Cornell

University in Ithaca, New York. Koolhaas is the co-founder and principal of the

Office for Metropolitan Architecture, also known as the OMA, and of its

research-oriented counterpart AMO (Architectuur Metropolitaanse Officie),

currently based his hometown of Rotterdam, Netherlands. Other building that

Koolhaas has designed and been involved in are the Casa da Música in Porto,

Seattle Central Library, Washington and the Netherlands Embassy, Berlin.

The Masion a Bordeaux, completed in 1998 is a private 500m2 home built into

the hill with panoramic views over the French city of Bordeaux and Garonne

river with no nearby neighbours. The two-time award winner building,

including the ‘1998 TIME Magazine Best Design of the year’, was ‘designed

for the intimate life of a family’ after the client was involved in a car accident

and now depends on a wheel chair to live and move. ‘The husband told the

architect “I do not want a simple house. I want a complex house to define my

world…” (OMA, 2010)

The architect proposed a house of three levels. The ground floor, half-carved

into the hill, accommodates the kitchen and television room, and leads to the

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garden. The bedrooms of the family are on the top floor, built as a dark

concrete box. In the middle of these two levels is the living room made of

glass where one contemplates the valley of the river Garonne and Bordeaux's

clear outline.

L'ascenseur

This key feature is the heart of the house and the most important feature to

improving the lifestyle of the husband, for whom this house was designed. It is

a three by three and a half meter elevating platform located in the middle of

the house which allows the husband to move freely between the three floors,

creating extra living and kitchen space depending on which floor it is stopped

on. It also creates its own space as a personal office and grants the husband

access to the two-storey bookshelf (Figure 1) and wine cellar in the basement.

None of the floors are complete without having the platform stop on that floor

which creates a sense of dead space and incompleteness to the building as a

whole.

Les Escaliers

There are 3 sets of stairs in total including a spiral staircase. The spiral

staircase in particular is very striking. It is made of triangles emerging from the

wall to make a very steep and tight stairwell that connects the top and middle

floors. “It’s narrow, but it’s enough for the hoover and for me” (Koolhaas,

2008). It is also quite a dangerous feature to use as you could easily slip and

Figure 1: Elevating platform.

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injure yourself on its shiny metal finish and it is such a tight stairwell with no

hand bar to hold yourself on to with if you were to fall.

The other stairs are simple staircase made from concrete. Connecting from

the lower level to the first level, another from the bottom to the top of the

house.

Le Joystick

There is no key to the house. The ‘joystick’ is a multifunctional device that

allows the owners to open the front door from the outside by simply pushing

or pulling the joystick it is also a light bollard that brightens the entrance

during the night. The only way to open and close the door from the outside is

by simply pushing or pulling on the ‘joystick’ that will automatically open the

door sliding it into the wall. There is a button on the inside to shut it behind

you. The ‘joystick’ is disabled when the alarm to the house is switched on with

a remote device.

Les Vitres

There is a lot of glass on site all

different shapes and sizes from

dynamic holes on the top floor to long

and tall glass panels on the second

floor to make the whole wall. (Figure 2)

Some windows have been cleverly designed and

disguised so that they blend in with rest of the fabric

and let in maximum amounts of light. The frames of

these windows are made out of the same material

as the whole house, concrete. This makes them far

to heavy to operate by hand so the residents must

depend on the operating system in which, when you

turn the handle on the circular window the whole

circle spins on a vertical axis allowing the operator

to open it easily and stay in control. (Figure 3)

Figure 2: Indoor circular window

Figure 3: A view of the house at night.

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The smaller dynamic holes that frame different parts of the view across the

Bordeaux countryside (Figure

4) have three different

theories to the windows have

been arranged. The first,

positioned at the eye level of a

standing child and adult and

also of a wheelchair user so

that when they walk across

the house they see different part

of the view. The second theory is that the dynamic holes connect to different

stationary points in the house for example bed, desk and sink, to the closest

outside point. The third theory is that from the same stationary points it frames

the view over Bordeaux.

Hublot

The theme of the circle follows into the outside space where it does a similar

task of allowing access from the

garden into the woods that

surround the house though a

circular concrete door that spins

on its vertical axis. This portal

has a different pattern on each

side to match the pattern on

either side of the outside wall.

This portal is different though as

it can spin freely and with much

more ease than the one on the

inside, with a simple bolt on the inside to stop it

spinning.

Figure 4: Dynamic Windows

Figure 5: The 2 circular portals

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L'emplacement

From the details giving to use the picture painted in our minds say that the

house tucked away in the middle of acres of beautiful French fields, far way in

the piece and quite. On the other hand from these picture I found on ‘Google

Earth’ can imagine a very different picture. You can see from the ‘Google

Maps’ snap shot (Figure 6), the long road up to the house (marked within the

red circle) which feels you are far away but it is actually very close to a airport

and major motorway which must be quite noisy at different times at the day.

The positive aspect is that from this Google Earth image (Figure 7), you can

see that from the top of the hill the house is situated on, you can’t even see

the huge car park but indeed look across over the Garonne River.

Fin

In conclusion, after reading many articles and watching ‘Koolhass Houselife’

by Ila Beka & Louise Lemoine, I feel that this house has not lived up to the

expectation gained from our initial view of the building. I was bitterly

disappointed with the interior architecture, design and furnishing with the

exception of the elevating platform. I would have hoped that the interior

designer or residence, took as much time as Koolhass did to design this

striking building. But it seems that it was rushed and is still unfinished with

many of the rooms a still portraying their original boring, dull concrete colour.

From the film camera moving around the interior of the building I got the

feeling that this building is has some of the same aspects as an enclosure.

This feeling was created by the thick, dull, grey walls, though-out the building,

Figure 7: Google Earth image showing the house and view across the river.

Figure 6: Google Map image showing birds eye view of house in red square and local environment.

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giving the building the status of a structure, more than a ‘home’ to a family. On

the other hand Koolhass had created pieces of architectural genius which

save the building’s reputation I think, for example the elevating platform, portal

windows and general layout of the building in particular how it is set back

within the hillside creating different ground levels form different views of the

house.

Combined with the section of the brief I have read that was giving to Rem

Koolhass and what I have seen from the film. I think it is safe to say that the

more complex a house is the more things there are that can go wrong.

Structurally and electrically. For example in this house the husband wanted

the house to be complex. So after designing has finished it is easy to see the

flaws in it. For example the elevating platform. If every book is not on the

bookshelf right the platform will get caught and therefore stuck, leaving the

person operating it stranded waiting for assistance. And across the footbridge

that connects the two sides of the second level it is impossible to open both

doors at the same time. Also from the film we were unable to see how the

house could cope with one of the main priorities, keeping water from entering

the house though gaps in the window fittings and damp in the floors. It is

apparent that a house of this status is not looked after in the right way.

Bibliography.

Films:Koolhaas Houselife (2008). Directed by: Ila Beka & Louise Lemoine [DVD] Beka Films.

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Journals:Filler, Martin (2010) House Life in a Koolhaas. In: The New York Review of Books

Websites:OMA, (2010) Maison a Bordeaux, France, Bordeaux, 1998.http://www.oma.eu/index.php?option=com_projects&view=portal&id=19&Itemid=10 (Accessed on: 3.12.10)

Images:Figure 1: Werlemann, Hans. Elevating Platform. At: http://www.oma.eu//images/photocache/stories/Bordeaux/bxdiapo6x6-085_1000x35x90.jpg (Accessed on 3.12.10)Figure 2:Werlemann, Hans. At: http://www.oma.eu//images/photocache/stories/Bordeaux/bxdiapo6x6-082_560x374x90.jpg (Accessed on 3.12.10)Figure 3: Ila Beka & Louise Lemoine. At: http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/wow/0aakoolniiisisi.jpg (Accessed on 16.12.10)Figure 4: Ila Beka & Louise Lemoine. At: http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/wow/0aakooolkoool.jpg (Accessed on 16.12.10)Figure 5: Werlemann, Hans. At: http://www.oma.eu//images/photocache/stories/Bordeaux/0275_008_560x374x90.jpg (Accessed on: 3.12.10)Figure 6: Google Maps. At: http://maps.google.com/ (Accessed on 28.12.10)Figure 7: Google Earth. At: http://www.google.com/earth/index.html (Accessed on 28.12.10)

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