Continuous process of change

architect Ricardo Bofill
interviewed by Fredy Massad

 

Ricardo Bofill designed his first house in the 1950s, when he was 17, and in 1963 he founded Taller de Arquitectura interdisciplinary studio, where he still works. He became famous in the 1960s, when he designed residential buildings completed in Spain, which displayed motifs of a local building tradition, vivid colours and discernible author expression, but also a progressive approach to the organization of space in collective housing. His important works in the 1970s and 1980s were realized in France and his social housing projects, with explicit references to historical typologies, are among iconic images of the European postmodernism. In the 1990s Bofill globalized his activity by completing many large scale projects in world metropolises, but, due to the concentration of predictable outlines of global architectural trends, as well as the ambivalent relation to postmodernism, his influence on the contemporary architectural thought has gradually faded. In the last couple of years, the Interest in Bofill’s work has been rekindled and young generations of architects again draw inspiration from his social engagement, utopianism, rich expression and subtle relation to the renovation of the architectural heritage.