Pablo bofill
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Spotlight: Ricardo Bofill
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Ricardo Bofill (born 5 December 1939), a graduate of the Barcelona University School of Architecture and the School of Geneva, and the founder of interdisciplinary firm Taller de Arquitectura, is renowned for his extensive body of work and ever-changing design aesthetic. His career has spanned over 50 years, encompassing more than 1000 buildings in cities ranging from Lisbon and Boston to Tokyo and St. Petersburg. His architectural approach has evolved over the decades and has permeated dozens of countries worldwide.
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Bofill was raised in a wealthy Catalan family by a contractor-builder father and homemaker mother. As a young man, Bofill traveled to Andalusia where he became fascinated by Spanish vernacular architecture. He came of age during the reign of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, and joined the ranks of Marxist activists which led to his ejection from university in Barcelona. He fled Spain for Geneva where he continued his education, ultimately launching hi
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Who was Ricardo Bofill (1939-2022)
Who was Ricardo Bofill?
We are not going to question the plain impossibility to define individual identity; still, should we as Domus, we would be answered with the portrait of a not-so-discreet figure, someone not easily accepting to fit the categorizations of history of contemporary architecture.
A strongly critical — and criticized — architect, since the beginning of his career Bofill finds his space on Domus, when ithe late-francoist 60s, he would contest and at the same time exploit the immobility and isolation of such context to stand out as a disruptive intellectual figure. And his House with Red walls (not the Muralla Roja in Alicante), published by Domus in 1965, comes as a demonstration, with the colour palette of his exterior overtly questioning the cliché of Mediterranean white. (I muri rossi di Castelldefells, Barcellona, in Domus 429, August 1965).
Considered by some a reactionary Franco-Fascist, and by others a radical Communist, for Bofill, poetry, ruins, green grass and a sense of meaningful space were suppose•
The Factory / Ricardo Bofill
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Text description provided by the architects. In 1973 Ricardo Bofill found a disused cement factory, an industrial complex from the turn of the century consisting of over 30 silos, subterranean galleries and huge machine rooms, and he decided to transform it into the head office of Taller de Arquitectura. Remodelling work lasted two years. The factory, abandoned and partially in ruins, was a compendium of surrealist elements: stairs that climbed up to nowhere, mighty reinforced concrete structures that sustained nothing, pieces of iron hanging in the air, huge empty spaces filled nonetheless with magic.
The transformation process began with the demolition of part of the old structure to leave hitherto concealed forms visible, as if the concrete had been sculpted. Once the spaces had been defined, cleaned of cement and encompassed by new greenery, the process began of adaptation to the new programme. Eight silos remained, which became offices, a models laborato
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