Ricardo Bofill

The passing of the Spanish architect calls for an exploration of his use of pattern and form to enrich the lived environment.

The eclectic oeuvre of Bofill, who died in January at the age of 82, brought new sui generis meaning to postmodernism.  “When I was 35, I was the most fashionable architect in the world,” he said.  “But I was always an outsider, never fitting in with architectural culture.”

Underpinning his work were visions of utopia, alongside nods to literature and philosophy, as evidenced in grand and expressive residential projects such as El Castillo de Kafka (1964-68), Xanadu (1967-71) and Walden-7 (1975).  The cubic volumes of Ibizan villages and North African kasbahs permeating the design of Kafka and Walden-7 exemplify his passion for vernacular architecture, discovered while travelling as a youth.  “I learned more in the middle of the Sahara, among nothing but dunes and sand, than in a French palace,” he said.

Underpinning his work were visions of utopia, alongside nods to literature and philosophy, as evidenced in grand and expressive residential projects such as El Castillo de Kafka (1964-68), Xanadu (1967-71) and Walden-7 (1975).  The cubic volumes of Ibizan villages and North African kasbahs permeating the design of Kafka and Walden-7 exemplify his passion for vernacular architecture, discovered while travelling as a youth.  “I learned more in the middle of the Sahara, among nothing but dunes and sand, than in a French palace,” he said.

Over the years, there have been a handful of outlier architects whose edificial conjurings appear as plucked from the prehistoric or ancient worlds as they might have been from a far-off planet in Star Wars.  The Flintstone-like homes designed by Jacques Couelle on the Cote d’Azur in the 1950’s are one example.  The cave-to-spaceship designs of his Californian contemporary, John Lautner, are another. The fantastical work of Catalan architect Ricardo Bofill Leví is yet another.  What makes Bofill so compelling, alongside the work itself, is that unlike his peers who worked and thrived in free and culturally flourishing environments, he did so from under the repression of Spain’s Franco dictatorship.

Ricardo Bofill