Update: following the screening period The Infinite Happiness is no longer available to watch on ArchDaily. The full collection of Bêka and Lemoine's films can be viewed on demand, here.
For two days only—between Friday, December 2 and Sunday, December 4—you can watch The Infinite Happiness, part of Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine's Living Architectures series, exclusively on ArchDaily. The film, shot entirely in Copenhagen's "8 House" designed by BIG, follows a group of residents (and passers-by) as they experience life in a contemporary housing block widely considered to embody new models of living.
Conceived as a personal video diary, The Infinite Happiness is an architectural experience. "Just like a Lego tower," the filmmakers suggest, "the film constructs a collection of life stories all interconnected through their personal relationships with the building." It therefore "draws the lines of a human map, which allows the viewer to discover the building through an internal and intimate point of view – all while questioning the architecture's ability to create collective happiness."
Marking the forthcoming release of two DVD box-sets of their entire œuvre (which was acquired by New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 2016) Bêka and Lemoine have, over the course of the Living Architectures project, developed films about and in collaboration with the likes of the Barbican in London, the Fondazione Prada, La Biennale di Venezia, Frank Gehry, Bjarke Ingels, the City of Bordeaux, the Arc en Rêve centre d’architecture, and more. Their goal in this has always been to "democratize the highbrow language of architectural criticism. [...] Free speech on the topic of architecture," Bêka has said, "is not the exclusive property of experts." Their first film, Koolhaas Houselife (2008), has come to embody this unique approach.
The Infinite Happiness will available to watch here on ArchDaily from Friday, December 2 (1800GMT/1300EST/0200CST) until Sunday, December 4 (0800GMT/0300EST/1600CST). The full collection of Bêka and Lemoine's films can be purchased and viewed on demand, here. Their 2016 DVD box set of the Living Architectures series can be purchased, here or here.
