Survey of films and lecture by Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine

Columbia GSAPP is excited to present a survey celebrating Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine’s unparalleled career to date with a screening program and reception on Sunday, November 13, and a lecture on Monday, November 14 in the School’s Wood Auditorium at Avery Hall. The program features an engaging body of work that spans their distinct 15-year oeuvre and is renowned for disrupting typical representations of contemporary architecture and the urban environment: Koolhaas HouseLife (2008), Barbicania (2014), The Infinite Happiness (2015), Moriyama-San (2017), and Tokyo Ride (2020). Following the lecture, the filmmakers will be joined in conversation by Mark Wasiuta, Co-Director of the Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices Program at Columbia GSAPP. 

The work of Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine presents architecture as entangled with labor, ecology, and social conflict. Their unique narrative and cinematographic approaches denaturalize buildings by revealing the complexities among the actors and their actions mobilized in the production of contemporary architecture and the urban environment. Examining sites across the world, a consistent thread throughout their work is forefronting people and how they use buildings to reveal the influence of the built environment on daily life.

Bêka & Lemoine’s films have been widely presented at international film screenings and biennials including the Cannes Film Festival, the XII Architecture Biennial of Sao Paulo, the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Oslo Architecture Triennale, Performa 17 in New York, the Chicago Architecture Biennial, and are frequently exhibited in international museums and cultural institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, among many others.

The events are open to the Columbia University community; the general public may attend by advance registration in compliance with current Columbia University health requirements; please visit the event page on our website for more information.

Screening schedule
Sunday, November 13, 2022 

1–2pm
Koolhaas HouseLife (2008, 58 minutes)

2–3:30pm
Barbicania (2014, 90 minutes)

3:45–4:48pm
Moriyama-San (2017, 63 minutes)

5:00–6:00pm
Reception

6:00–7:25pm
The Infinite Happiness (2015, 85 minutes)

7:30–9:00pm
Tokyo Ride (2020, 90 min)

Lecture
Monday, November 14, 2022

6:30pm
Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine
with a response by Mark Wasiuta and audience Q&A