Activities and Uses Over Buildings, The Infinite Happiness By Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine

Abstract

While architecture offers spaces to produce cinema in, cinema simultaneously makes the existence of these spaces visible, using them as a material. Concurrently, space becomes the subject of cinema, too. Documentary films about architecture, illustrate this point clearly and show synchronicity with the space. The Infinite Happiness- which is a part of the Living Architecture series directed by Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine, is one of the documentaries that illustrate this association. The subject of the documentary is the “8 House”, a building designed by Bjarke Ingels, and it is described from the user’s point of view in Infinite Happiness. This article aims to analyze the documentary through architectural elements, activities and uses in everyday life. It seeks for the codes between the conceived space that occur in the mind of the architect and everyday life space from users’ points of view rather than precise results. The documentary film was fragmented into specific time periods. These specific time periods are analyzed in terms of activity, discourse (manifesto) and physical space. Tensions arising between the formal language of the space and use of space have been noted. Causes and consequences of inconsistencies are discussed. In this context, Bjarke Ingel’s architecture produces differences that include radical changes over tradition and space. On the other hand, Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine exhibit the radical changes produced by Bjarke Ingel with critical cinematographic methods. They focus on people and uses, disrupts the integrity, structure, function of architecture’s ideal representation, and redefines it as a part of everyday life.