Ricardo Bofill

1939–2022 · Spanish (Catalan) · 8 buildings on the wall

Ricardo Bofill (1939–2022) was a Spanish architect from Barcelona who founded the Taller de Arquitectura in 1963 and grew it into an international architecture and urban design practice. His early housing experimented with three-dimensional modular geometry; his later, monumental work in France made him one of Europe's best-known postmodern architects. Bjarke Ingels has named La Fábrica and Walden 7 as influences.

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La Muralla Roja in Calp (1973), "the Red Wall", is a postmodern apartment complex of about fifty homes. Walden 7 in Sant Just Desvern (1975) is a "vertical labyrinth" of 18 towers around seven linked courtyards, with flats made of 28-square-metre modules that can be combined as families change. Next door, La Fábrica (1975) is a former cement factory that his practice turned into offices and living space. Les Espaces d'Abraxas near Paris (1983) puts housing in grand Roman, Greek and Baroque forms, which critics called "a unique combination of the romantic sublime and totalitarian awe"; it has served as a backdrop for films such as Brazil and The Hunger Games. Ricardo Bofill's buildings are studied for modular housing and for monumental classical forms made in concrete.

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