Louise Lemoine Torrès

Louise Lemoine is a French filmmaker and artist renowned for her innovative approach to exploring architecture and the built environment through cinema. She is best known for her collaborative work with Ila Bêka, with whom she has co-directed a series of acclaimed films that delve into the human experiences within architectural spaces. Their entire body of work was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 2016, marking a significant milestone in architectural filmmaking.

Born in France, Lemoine studied cinema and visual arts, which laid the foundation for her distinctive storytelling style that combines documentary and narrative techniques. Her films have been featured at major exhibitions, including the Venice Architecture Biennale, where her work was praised for shifting architectural perspectives. Lemoine’s approach moves away from traditional depictions of architecture as static and object-centered, focusing instead on the dynamic, lived experiences of people interacting with these spaces daily.

Through her filmmaking, Louise Lemoine has redefined how architecture is perceived and documented. Her film Moriyama-San, produced with Ila Bêka, exemplifies this vision by portraying the everyday life of a Japanese man living in an iconic architectural home. This film gained global recognition and was even streamed on Dezeen’s website, where it reached a large international audience.

Her contributions have had a significant impact on both architectural discourse and the cinematic portrayal of space and society. Lemoine’s work has been showcased in exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou, which highlighted her unique ability to capture the human aspects of architecture. The Los Angeles Times referred to her film Koolhaas Houselife as “breaking down the walls of architectural documentary,” showcasing her innovative methods.

Lemoine lives and works between France and Italy. Since 2005 she has been working in collaboration with her husband Ila Bêka with whom she founded the research and creation platform Bêka&Partners.

Presented by The New York Times as "cult figures in the European architecture world", Lemoine and Bêka mainly focus their research on experimenting new narrative and cinematographic forms in relation to contemporary architecture.

Koolhaas Houselife, the first film she co-directed with Bêka in 2008, has been acclaimed by the international critique as "the architectural cult movie". They self-financed the film in order to assure creative freedom.

Following the success of Koolhaus Houselife, Bêka and Lemoine shot the four other films that would make up their Living Architectures series. This series, which comprises Koolhaus Houselife; Pomerol, Herzog & de Meuron; Xmas Meier; Gehry's Vertigo; and Inside Piano, follows the mundane realities of maintaining buildings by renowned architects, including Rem Koolhaas (the Bordeaux house), Frank Gehry (the Bilbao Guggenheim), and Auguste Perret.

Her films have been selected and awarded in some important international film festivals such as CPH:DOX, Chicago International Film Festival, DocAviv, Torino Film Festival, FIFA, etc.

She has been invited to lecture and present her films in many international cultural institutions and prestigious universities such as Venice Biennale (2008, 2010, 2014), MoMA (New York), Metropolitan Museum of Art (New-York), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Barbican Art Gallery (London), Canadian Centre for Architecture (Montréal), NAi (Rotterdam, NL), MAXXI (Rome), Harvard GSD, Architectural Association School of Architecture (London), Mextropoli (Mexico).

Her films are part of important art collections, the CNAP have acquired in 2014 a copy of Koolhaas Houselife and in 2015 a copy of the video installation La Maddalena for the French national collections. The video work Spiriti has been commissioned by Fondazione Prada for their private collection.

Bêka & Lemoine have received several awards and honors, marking their influence on contemporary architecture and film: