Ricardo Bofill Levi was born in 1939 in Barcelona to a family of the Catalan cultural bourgeoisie, supportive of his earliest endeavours in architecture – Emili, the father, was a local property developer and builder himself. As the founder of the Taller de Arquitectura, Ricardo Bofill’s enduring exploration of diverse cultures and stylistic approaches laid the foundation for the current activities of RBTA. Today, in the function of Chairman, he oversees the work of our team in the plurality of its skills and expertise, synthesizing talent and a natural forward-looking vision.
Routes
SPACE AND ARCHITECTURE
THE CITY AS LAND FORM
ARCHITECTURAL COMPOSITION BY RICARDO BOFILL
SPACE AND ARCHITECTURE

THE CITY AS LAND FORM

HONOURS AND AWARDS
PUBLICATIONS & EXHIBITIONS
Ricardo Bofill Levi
Biography
Texts
Routes
SPACE AND ARCHITECTURE
THE CITY AS LAND FORM
ARCHITECTURAL COMPOSITION BY RICARDO BOFILL
Drawings
SPACE AND ARCHITECTURE

THE CITY AS LAND FORM

Honours & Awards
HONOURS AND AWARDS
Publications & Exhibitions
PUBLICATIONS & EXHIBITIONS
Ricardo Bofill Levi was born in 1939 in Barcelona to a family of the Catalan cultural bourgeoisie, supportive of his earliest endeavours in architecture – Emili, the father, was a local property developer and builder himself. As the founder of the Taller de Arquitectura, Ricardo Bofill’s enduring exploration of diverse cultures and stylistic approaches laid the foundation for the current activities of RBTA. Today, in the function of Chairman, he oversees the work of our team in the plurality of its skills and expertise, synthesizing talent and a natural forward-looking vision.
Architecture as a universal language
The career of Ricardo Bofill is exemplified by an overarching goal – developing a vocabulary for the organization of space centred on the human scale. Challenging the established dominant thinking in architecture, he rediscovered traditional patterns and local forms to give them new functions and purpose. To do so, it was necessary to master both technical expertise and the languages of architecture, as emerged in their numerous stylistic expressions throughout history and across borders.
“Architecture is the victory of man over the irrational,” he states. In the pursue of granting harmony to our lived environment, different cultures inflected this fundamental concept in a richness of vocabularies. Within such diversity, Bofill’s approach to architecture enabled the Taller to interact with cultural heritage and technological development in an equally constructive way. Formulating our own adaptive vocabulary for a changing world, we place human experience at its core in aspirations, forms, functions.
A new beginning and the spirit of the Taller
The path of Ricardo Bofill finds its starting point in a twofold rejection. First, of a certain international architecture in fashion after the Second World War, blamed for having killed cities and their social fabric with its soulless functionalism. Secondly, of the oppressive reality of Francisco Franco’s rule, during which he was expelled from the Universitat de Barcelona in the framework of general political unrest. He would then go on to complete his studies graduating from the École des Beaux-Arts of Geneva, Switzerland, and to rediscover the vernacular Catalan style and the minimalist architecture of North Africa.
Bofill’s early works are characterized by simple forms, modestly articulated in lines and corners, inspired by villages on the verge of the Sahara Desert. These complexes of small houses appeared majestic and towering like a fortress, to be then internally organized as reassuring, communitarian spaces connected by staircases and patios. Such way of organizing life and housing played a major role in formulating the critical regionalism pervading the first residential commissions of the Taller de Arquitectura.
The workshop was first established in 1932 by his father, architect Emili Bofill. Then, in the 60s, Ricardo successfully gathered within RBTA a multidisciplinary team including literary critic Salvador Clotas, poet José Agustín Goytisolo, economist Julia Romea, and architects Anna Bofill and Peter Hodgkinson. Projects were approached in light of the social utopias of the time, developing an architecture without façade that would protect privacy, while also fostering community building. La Muralla Roja, Kafka’s Castle and the Gaudì District figure among the most notable examples of this approach.
Routes of a research across history and space
“A nomad, and I’m still a nomad,” Bofill writes in 1989. A journey, indeed, is the best-suited image to portray his lifelong research into the way humanity organized space. It is a rediscovery of traditions and roots, equally explored by simple craftsmen and great architects of the past.
With the curiosity and the yearning for space that initially pushed him towards the desert, Bofill investigated with his team the Mediterranean origins of his compositional upbringing. Reinterpreted, past experiences could become a tool for experimentation. In this way, the final work presents itself as the result of a research, observing diversity and refining cultural sensitivity, regardless of the location of reference.
The cubic units and communities he observed in Ibiza and North Africa provided the basis for the concept of the City in Space, an architectural utopia deployed to develop the avant-garde residential landmark of Walden 7. Likewise, classicist composition and Renaissance inspiration gave impetus to the social housing developments of the French New Towns in the 1980s. And as the research continued, dogmas were discussed, and form and function did not appear as tightly connected as they seemed before.
Modern classicism and world fame
In the 1970s, Bofill and the Taller – meanwhile joined by architect Jean Pierre Carniaux – were tasked by the French government with the development of massive welfare residential estates and masterplans. It was a turning point for the workshop, as these projects would lead to the definitive establishment of our architectural practice internationally.
The adoption of classical forms and geometry in contemporary architecture was paired with the latest advancements in construction. Adapted to such projects, the golden rules of French Renaissance composition take shape in precast concrete, and are applied to design the cityscapes of Paris, Montpellier, Versailles. In the form of a reaction to the massifying effect of brutalism and international architecture, the peripheries reclaim a human dimension to organizing private and public spaces. The individual returns on the scene, in a highly theatrical setting, as both actor and spectator of the story unfolding.
At the end of the past century, research into new materials and functions brings in new developments in North America and Asia, marked by the shift to a high-tech architecture. In the 1990s and the early 2000s, glass and steel become more prevalent in the projects of RBTA, employed in the construction of offices and headquarters, commercial ventures, transportation infrastructures, high-end amenities. And yet, in an increasingly globalized architecture, we preserve and cherish an understanding of the spirit of each place that sets us apart from homogeneous, undifferentiated stylistic trends.
In over eighty years and three generations of architectural practice, numerous awards have acknowledged the exclusive talent and expertise of Ricardo Bofill and the Taller, celebrating our approach to design and composition. To this day, research into new methods and architectural exploration reaffirm our workshop as the creative force of unique, tailor-made spaces across the globe, following the acclaimed trail blazed by our founder and chairman.
Routes
A nomad, I’m still a nomad. A traveller with no haven, forced to establish his points of reference depending on the route he takes.
I was born in Barcelona of a Catalan father and a Venetian mother. In other words, at the crossroads between two cultures that have confronted and merged with each other over the centuries. When you’ve grown up in Catalonia during the Franco regime, you’ve few choices before you. You dream of freedom and great journeys. It’s for this reason that my adolescent dreams were invariably tinged with bitterness: I had the impression of living in a country apart, far removed from all the social and cultural events of the time, with the intolerable sensation of being relegated to a suburb of Europe.
I left as soon as I could.
First to the south. Andalusia, with its colours, its simple volumes, the marriage between Islam and Italy beneath the vibrant midday sun. This was my initiation into light. Now, when I’m there, I invariably feel at home.
Then I crossed the Mediterranean. In the Drâa Valley of Morocco I discovered villages of piled-up cubes, built on a day-to-day basis depending on the families’ growth rate, and yet mysteriously well-organised.
All around, the desert. The strange forms that dunes adopt, endlessly transformed by strong winds, struck me as the essential, though underlying; elements of everything we might draw. The pink Tenere sands standing out against the indigo blue sky and the infinite spaces of rocks and stones were my initiation into absolute beauty.
There I also came across men. Several of those nomads, who live in a civilisation totally different from mine, became my friends. In them I discovered the people most familiar of all with space, due mainly to the fact that they have to get their bearings constantly as they travel, that they have to read the landscape and transform its natural features into points of reference. What’s more, in this almost static landscape time is also a barely perceptible category whose variations, mutations and rhythms are experienced almost organically by these men: they must know how to interpret the relationship between hadows and light, splendid when the fire in the sky refuses to pardon even a few metres of error. Likewise, these dark men taught me a philosophy, a way of life conditioned by the elements of nature that is dramatised in the spirit of Greek fatalism and tends to found beauty anew. This is what is defined in the long run as the essence of all artistic projects and, consequently, of all works of art; this is also the consummate raison d’être of Classicism, in the sense that nothing is completely finished, even when the contrary is apparently believed. Classicism is ‘incompleteness’ – the absence of satisfaction –, since it is accomplished in desire, in the project, in a vectorial sense of the work. Furthermore, these men introduced me to their supreme sense of elegance, an elegance that has nothing to do with material wealth. For them, the most insignificant gesture, the tiniest fold or the slightest bouclé are, quite simply, beautiful.
My brothers of the south were there, but the north continued to be unknown territory for me. I discovered Paris. A city at times disproportionate, strictly marked out, covered by an excessively grey sky and for a long time alien to me, as alien and disconcerting to my mind as its social customs. In time, I set up a studio there. In Paris I have lived and fathered a son. The city has begun to be familiar to me.
I still had to discover Denmark, Sweden, Holland, the United States, whose secret mechanisms I subsequently tried to decipher. Although I’ve done all this as a citizen of the periphery. Because it’s true: Catalonia is not a centre. Perhaps it’s a springboard, an articulation, a kneecap, an information node that makes it possible to understand the north and the south and provides access to the general network of the territory. If I had been born in London, in Paris or in New York I would have been on an equal footing, in the pole position in the international race. But Catalonia, however off-centre it may be, at least has the advantage of stimulating hopes: maybe to be a good listener you have to come from the periphery. How can you open yourself up to the world when you’re convinced that you live in its centre?
My Catalan – peripheral – origins have made me more receptive, more attentive towards civilisations far removed from the centre, and for this reason they are essential to my work as an architect.
And this, needless to say, is due to the fact that this discipline is based on the interpretation of landscapes that lies in the subconscious of the people who inhabit them. A city provides all kinds of information: one may recognise the structure of property through the size or decoration of houses; the relationship between rich and poor through the layout of districts; the prevailing lifestyle, extroverted or introverted; also the value that a given community attaches to encounter; or the contrast between palaces and slums; the triumphant expression of skyscrapers dedicated to the ego cult; the orderly, symmetrical monuments in the French style, invariably tinged with surreptitious political ambitions; and lastly, the patios of certain oriental palaces, preserved from the indiscreet gaze of the passer-by, belonging to a civilisation that prefers observation, the interplay of gazes and the imbrication of passions.
To be an architect means understanding space organised by man, decoding the spontaneous behaviour and movements of a population and, additionally, perceiving the needs for change that this population may unconsciously express. We have to locate these shortcomings in order to make our own contribution.
But in order to read each gesture as a sign one has to become totally submerged in a culture, to descend to the most insignificant details while at the same time preserving an objective viewpoint. In this respect, there are two ways to be an architect. One is traditional – that of Gaudí, whose gaze took in a perfectly delimited territory, or that of Palladio, who at most travelled from his native Vicenza to Venice -, and the other more contemporary, which involves the risk of being an architect of the world, which does not lack merit since it carries with it a risk and a challenge. The life that forces me to devise an ever increasing number of projects in the four corners of the world, between Boeings and hotels, may lack the serene poetry of Palladio, though it has the advantage of cleansing my gaze after each trip.
All the above refers to spatial itineraries. However, this same itinerary must be made through history. As André Malraux observed, we live in the era of the imaginary museum in which the Baroque and Classicism, Romanticism and Surrealism coexist without colliding. The time has now passed for debates on style, like those which took place in schools that ceremoniously excluded dissident voices. In one and the same work we may recognise different influences, yet this doesn’t mean we must change the project’s objective. In a work of creation we may use different elements inherited from past eras without necessarily producing a collage. In this sense also, art consists of knowing how to interiorise the formal elements that belong to the work while at the same time preserving indispensable critical distance. In this process there is no fixed domicile, but rather many oases, stopovers on a historical road, resembling post houses. If these pauses become a conscious process, it means that the artist controls them and possesses mastery over his own creative process. In my own personal case, the nucleus of this process is architecture. And more than a deliberate choice, this was a product of my origins. My father is a builder and when I was a child he would take me to his construction sites. It was from him that I learnt the craftsmanship of brick, how to build the Catalan staircase and vault and how to use ceramics as a construction element. It was also at that time that they told me about one of my ancestors, whose name and surname I bear, who built Girona Cathedral. It seems that he was a man with both feet firmly on the ground, for it is said that due to lack of funds he decided to endow the cathedral with a single nave only, thereby creating a vaulted space of impressive dimensions.
In on-site work I came across a universe that I would hardly have discovered at the university. By talking to the foremen, I tried to understand/learn how they managed to place the bricks to make a spiral on top of a chimney. I contrasted by first drawings with this phenomenon. Likewise, I strove to grasp the limits of manufacture, of ‘savoir faire’, and I often felt incapable of surpassing tradition. Occasionally I dared propose new forms based on simple logical reasoning. With a variety of results: some collapsed, others remained standing.
In more personal, human terms, I greatly admired the building labourers when I saw them hard at work in the heights of the scaffolding, loaded with bricks, giving form to plans that someone else had drawn up. When they had finished their day’s work, these same labourers would tell me in the cafés about a lost war, about a defeat that I somehow made my own and which became another of my initiations.
Politics, like school and military service, reinforced my twofold sensation of being where I was and somewhere else at the same time. In my earliest memories – it must have been in 1951, during the first strike that marked the beginning of social resistance to the Franco regime – I see an eleven-year-old boy, me, who wanted to do what the grown-ups did and struggled to take down the trolley poles from the trams. When I was sixteen and had just started at university, together with a group of friends I founded the first free students’ union, which constituted open provocation against the regime. I associated with communist students, who at that time were the only really organised ones. Together with my generation, I supported the transition back to democracy in Spain and in 1976 turned by back on all forms of political activity, with the intention of definitively regaining my individuality and thereby acquiring a personal view of the world. That is, for a time I was interested in the mechanisms of resistance and power-taking; later, due to the fact that all ideologies struck me as partial and all politicians uncreative, whenever I could I avoided taking an active part in politics. Consequently, there was in me a will to understand and, at the same time, a desire to place things in their true perspective. I’ve no doubt in my mind that my devotion to architecture was born from this split in my character.
It’s for this reason that military service was a far more painful experience for me than being jailed. The difference between them was that in Franco’s time prisoners, above all political prisoners, could preserve their own identity. Barcelona jail, for example – a model construction in the form of a star, like an eighteenth-century Utopia -, is a beautiful space in which no personality disintegration process took place by which to crush the individual, unlike in the military sphere, where not even the tiniest hint of rebellion was tolerated. You had to follow the group and keep in step. Only very occasionally did I manage to escape from the barracks, a fortress on the highest point of the island of Menorca. I went down to the sea which lashed against the rocks and there I recovered the sensation of immutable space.
I still suffer from a number of phobias after all these rebellions. For example, I can’t possibly queue up to see a film. It suffocates me. I can’t maintain a network of mundane relationships. When I have to take part in a rite, in any form of ceremony, I feel uncomfortable. Although instead of rejecting all systems as a block, I’ve striven to become familiar with them and, in this way, use them and place them in my service.
To become an architect and to build requires the stance of the spectator, of the social conduct analyst. It’s a matter of assuming the point of encounter between our own personality and the different contexts of reality. For this reason, one must acquire great methodological rigour.
I don’t believe in the myth of pure inspiration, of the delirious view of a world within our reach. Talent, even genius, exists, but it needs the support of a line of development consolidated day after day. How, then, can we separate the essential from the superfluous if we are not sure of the direction our quest takes?
Consequently, the objective of this book is a threefold one: in the first place, it will attempt to reveal how creation management works in my case, a form of management that includes organisation of my own personality and the establishment of links between my different projects, as well as a deep analysis of the political, administrative and financial framework, which is indispensable to an understanding of the realm in which such creation takes place.
Having established this realm, in the second place I shall attempt to follow the route of the nomad I am from the vocational viewpoint: from vernacular architecture to Classicism, from craftsmanship to the most sophisticated industrial processes, explaining how my style has formed and what is to be understood by style.
Thirdly, this analysis of my activity would not be complete without reflection on the power that tradition provides us with. An architect isn’t God, even when God sometimes borrows His art from him, metaphorically speaking. But this doesn’t mean that the architect has fewer responsibilities, responsibilities he must know in order to assume them better.
The last few decades have constituted a disaster for our habitat. We know how to build cities, but we’ve forgotten the art of embellishing our historical centres. We’ve invented new materials, but buildings continue to exhibit their perennial ugliness. The constructions in the suburbs of our metropolises are no more than urban pollution. The time has therefore come to rethink the world in architectural terms.
To this end, the architect must reoccupy his place in the heart of the everyday, though he must respect, needless to say, the economic and commercial order. As an artist, it is up to him to avoid misunderstandings and hasty exaltations. The following pages respond to this and no other ambition.
“Espaces d’une vie”, by Ricardo Bofill and Jean-Louis Andrée
Editions Odile Jacob, 1989
SPACE AND ARCHITECTURE
For me, the most important thing in architecture is the organization of space. A return to the madness of origins, to the hunger for space inherited from childhood, the anguish of claustrophobia. And yet I had to master this space, give it structure, form. I had to learn to perceive, observe and give geometrical form to nature; a journey through history. I found that to go beyond the initial burst of energy, to build on the inadequacy and madness of an initial value, mastery of a real language was essential; a concept not lacking in ambiguity.
What separates us all, ultimately, is our approach to space. Space, the infinity which surrounds us, and of which only lines can make us aware. A horizon, a cliff, and yes, even the design of a house gives form to space. Space as we see it: like the interplay between solid matter and the void.
Architecture is the victory of man over the irrational: the construction of a familiar, domestic, human space. The entire history of architecture, whether told through the golden section or the most sophisticated calculations of proportions, ultimately comes down to no more than the extravagant dream of giving our environment the reassuring appearance of a harmonious figure.
Before the advent of international architecture, which erased differences and peculiarities, these two concepts had geographically speaking, their own particular setting. Luminous intensity – on the shores of the Mediterranean a few centimetres of relief on a façade is enough to create a projected shadow which transfigures the entire façade, dividing the sun and the shade. Space then takes on its entire dimension, assumes concrete form, immediately and spectacularly rewarding the architect who endeavours to mould it.
In Stockholm or in Brussels, light does not bring out the contrast starkly enough for volumes to unfurl before our eyes in all their depth. An alignment of columns, or arches, has difficulty in breaking away to create a relief, vibrant with life. A semi-column, a pilaster stuck against a façade, is just one element of rhythm that lends form to the material without giving life to the void which surrounds it.
The architecture of the north and the architecture of the south: space, composition, harmony, city, as organized fabric against a silhouette, a skyline, volume and technology triumphant: the distinction, however diagrammatically it may be, must always be made.
The history of architecture shows us that the outcome of the struggle between these two approaches to architecture is not necessarily to the detriment of space.
To define architecture as the organization of a space is therefore to distinguish it from simple construction. The final aims could, in the end, be diametrically opposed. When he builds a shelter, man is threatened by nature. He protects himself from the cold wind, ain or wild animals. He is the weak one defending himself. When he erects a stone to mak a tomb, when he plans out a temple, when he plans out a temple for gods in the image of man, he no longer has a relationship of conflict with nature, but rather one of challenge. He is no longer opposing, but observing nature to transform it, to remodel it in his own image.
The architect is content to geometrise nature, to express the hidden order of things. Creation needs to return to its source, and this is the essential challenge of our creation: to surpass nature, to give it order so as to defy time, chance and death.
Although inextricably linked to the observation of the immutable laws of nature, architecture is no less a form of culture. As such, it has a historical dimension.
Like any language, architecture must continually enrich its vocabulary, create new forms let its grammar develop. It sees complexity as a living organ. Architecture must then, be brought up to date, be modified buy each speaker.
An architect style is indeed the result both of a local trait and of a personal imprint.
THE CITY AS LAND FORM
I seek to define the bases of a possible classic architecture which would go beyond tired functionalism through an analysis of the city as land form.
Urban Design has been a forgotten discipline since the days that the city burst forth from its original form. An urban culture no longer exists and yet it is the basic element which makes exchange and communication possible. It is this culture with which we must deal: by restructuring the architecture of existing cities, by adapting historic centers to the new urban demand, by transforming degraded suburban form , by limiting urban growth, by restructuring the countryside.
The architect must have a global vision of Architecture once again. The level of abstraction that must be maintained is formal, geometric, and without regard to chronologies, enabling the establishment of a direct relation among the signs produced by various architectural eras thus leading to a vocabulary of transformation. The transformation of urban spaces depends on a genuine knowledge of classic art, its laws, its structures, its transformations. For example, one would most usefully retain the composition of volume itself from Renaissance urban design, the production of dynamic spaces from the Baroque, the composition of a volumetric based on juxtaposition of orders having legal and economic criteria from classic urban design. Until the end of the nineteenth century, the historic centre of the city of one, or more regulating forms which served as base and frame for construction and the sitting of buildings. Thereafter, urban building programs were changed and economic imperatives dictated most construction. Architecture became thus an abstraction. In this setting zoning was born. It is a system of urban planning dictated by traffic mechanisms and by the attribution of urban functions to land. This reductionist vision of urban complexity kills urban culture and makes any composition possibility vanish. The city offers us a panorama of anonymous forms, one following the other. However the possibility finally exists to redesign urban forms and the types of edifices to be sited in this form according to current needs.
Urban land form has degenerated. Chaotic situations abound. Generating principles, a global vision are the indispensables in treating the city and each of its particular cases. The following data should be kept in mind if a sound structure is to be obtained as cities are created:
Each nation, region or area should be seen as an entity having economic, political and cultural identity as a goal.
The dimension of a city should be limited by the economic and social organizational abilities of its inhabitants. Once this limit is infringed, degeneration begins.
When the existing city is too large, urban expansion must be controlled. Green spaces larger than planned expansions should be protected so that a harmony may be established among the different parts of the city.
The potential number of urban forms is infinite but the city and its public space must be correctly oriented. We know, for example, that the best orientation for streets is north-south, east-west.
Cities must be designed. Besides the circular city, and the linear city, an infinite number of intermediate forms exist.
Defining the form of the city is a way of expressing that its inhabitants belong to the same community.
The design of the landscape is a discipline necessary to the control, rationalization and recuperation of agricultural production, key to avoiding the economic, social and cultural split between city and country.
At each point within the city a view of nature is desirable. If the natural elements which surround the city are to be preserved, urban space should open to the outside.
We must understand the structuring of neighborhoods which form the city region when dispersed throughout the territory. The city-region will be formed and governed independently, so that inhabitants are as close and possible to political agencies.
ARCHITECTURAL COMPOSITION BY RICARDO BOFILL
Architecture has been defined as a system that allows composing and relating elements with rules that can be considered syntactic. In speech, nouns, verbs or adjectives have no meaning unless they are integrated in a whole sentence; in the same way, in architecture an architectural object has no purpose and literally has no meaning in the space unless it establishes a relationship within the whole context.
This relationship is given by geometry. Our geometry integrates more complex figures and generative numbers, like the Golden Ratio. The Golden Ratio has been a major concern to all classical architects: the organization of the world according to the proportions of the human body, placing the individual at the centre of a harmony that would correspond to the harmony of the universe. The famous drawing by Leonardo Da Vinci showing the study of the proportions of the human body reveals the measurements that applied to the construction of buildings, mainly churches and cathedral, and to the design of cities.
In his “Critique of Judgment” Kant writes: “Stiff regularity (related to mathematic regularity) is opposed to good taste: its contemplation distract us only very briefly and we get easily bored, since its ultimate purpose is neither knowledge nor a practical function”. Straight or curved lines on a plan and the relationship they establish provide the means to speak a language; indispensable, but not enough. A linguistic is not always a good writer, yet a good writer is always a good master of his language.
HONOURS AND AWARDS
- 2009:
Vittorio de Sica Architecture Prize
- 2009:
Life Time Achievement Award. The Israelí Building Center
- 1996:
Named honorary fellow of the Bund Deutscher Architekter (BDA) Bonn, Germany
- 1995:
Awarded Doctor Honoris Causa, Metz University, France
- 1989:
Awarded Architect in Belgium, Ordre des Architectes Conseil du Brabant, Brussels.
- 1989:
Chicago Architecture Award, Illinois Council/American Institute of Architects/Architectural Record, Chicago, USA
- 1989:
Awarded by the Académie Internationale de Philosophie de l´Art , Bern, Switzerland.
- 1985:
Named honorary fellow of the American Institute of Architects.
- 1984:
Awarded Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres Degree, Ministry of Culture, Paris, France.
- 1980:
Awarded Ciudad de Barcelona Prize of Architecture for renovation of the cement factory in Sant Just Desvern, Barcelona, Spain.
- 1979:
Awarded Architecte Agrée Degree Ordre National des Architectes, Paris, France.
- 1978:
Awarded A.S.I.D. (American Society of Interior Designers), International Prize, New York.
- 1968:
Awarded Fritz Schumacher, Honoris Causa Degree, University of Hamburg, Germany
PUBLICATIONS & EXHIBITIONS
PUBLICATIONS
- Ricardo Bofill, Jean-Louis André. “Spazi di una vita”. Il Cardo Editori, Venice, Italy 1996.
- Ricardo Bofill, Nicolas Véron. “L’Architecture des villes”. Odile Jacob, Paris, France 1995.
- Bartomeu Cruells. “Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura”. Zanichelli Editore, Bologna , Italy 1994.
- Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura. “Memory-Future”. Published by Taller de Arquitectura, 1993.
- Bartomeu Cruells. “Ricardo Bofill Obras y Proyectos/Works and Projects”. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, Spain 1992.
- Jean-Louis André et Patrick Genard. “Swift, Architecture & Technologie”. Published by Taller Design, 1991.
- “Ricardo Bofill. Barcelona Airport”. Edizioni Tecno, Milan, Italy 1991.
- Ricardo Bofill, Jean-Louis André. “Espacio y Vida”. Tusquets, Barcelona, Spain 1990.
- Annabelle D’Huart. “Ricardo Bofill”. Editions du Moniteur, Paris, France 1989.
- Ricardo Bofill, Jean-Louis André. “Espaces d’une vie”. Odile Jacob, Paris, France 1989.
- “Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura: Edificios y proyectos 1960-1984”. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, Spain 1988.
- Warren A. James. “Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura: Buildings and Projects 1960-1984”. Rizzoli International, New York, U.S.A. 1988.
- “Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura”. Global Architecture. Architects nº 4. Rizzoli International, New York, U.S.A. 1985.
- Annabelle D’Huart. Ricardo Bofill. “El Dibujo de la Ciudad, Industria y Clasicismo”. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, Spain 1984.
- “Ricardo Bofill. Projets Français 1978-1981. La Cité: Histoire et Téchnologie”. Editions L’Equerre, Paris, France 1981.
- Annabelle D’Huart. “Ricardo Bofill, Los Espacios de Abraxas, El Palacio, El Teatro, El Arco”. Editions L’Equerre, Paris, France 1981.
- Ricardo Bofill. “L’Architecture d’un Homme”. Editions Arthaud, Paris, France 1978.
- José Agustín Goytisolo. “Taller de Arquitectura”, poemas. Blume, Barcelona, Spain 1976.
- Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura. “Hacia una Formalización de la Ciudad en el Espa
EXHIBITIONS
- “Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura, Projectos e edificios”. Museu Casa da Luz, Funchal, Madeira, Portugal. 2001
- “Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura. Three Cities, Three Projects”. Pristasvni Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic. July-August 2000
- “Le Architetture dello spazio pubblico, Barcelona Airport”. Milano Triennale, Italy. 1997-99.
- “Project for Bologna Central Station”, Bologna Municipality, Italy. 1995
- “Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura”, Guangzhou, China. 1993
- “Architecture & Sacred Space in modernity”, Venice Biennale, Italy. 1992.
- “Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura: MemoryFuture, Recent Projects”. The Chicago. Athaeneum, U.S.A. 1992
- “Barcelona the city and the ‘92”, Venice Biennale, Italy. 1992
- “Barcelona la ciutat i el 92”, IMPU, Depósito de la Aguas, Barcelona, Spain. 1990
- “Urban Furniture”, Rotterdamse Kunst Stichting, Rotterdam, Holland. 1989
- “Catalonian Art in New York (Design & Arts & Fashion)”, Armory, New York, U.S.A. 1990
- “R.B.Taller de Arquitectura », Musée d’Ixelles, Brussels, Belgium. 1989
- “R.B. Taller de Arquitectura”, Stichting de Beurs Van Berlage, Amsterdam, Holland. 1989
- “La Coruña, el Mar y la Ciudad”, Palacio Municipal de Exposiciones, Kiosco Alfonso. La Coruña, Spain. 1986
- “R.B. Taller de Arquitectura. The City, Classicism and Technology”, Max Protetch Gallery, New York NY, U.S.A. 1985
- Ricardo Bofill and Leon Krier, Architecture, Urbanism and History. Museum of Modern Art, New York. 1985
- “Architecture Espagnole (Années 30-80) », Europalia ‘85, Brussels, Belgium. 1985
- “Domaine Clos Pegase Winery” Competition , San Francisco, U.S.A. 1985
- “Spaanse Kunst 1984”, Nouvelles Images Gallery, The Hague, Holland. 1984
- “Follies: Architecture for the late XX century landscape”, J. Corcoran Gallery, Los Angeles, New York, U.S.A. 1984
- “Follies”, Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Urbanismo, Madrid, Spain. 1984
- “Primera Semana de Video y Arquitectura”, Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Urbanismo, Madrid, Spain. 1984
- “Arquitectura de Tierra”, Palau Lonja Valencia, Spain. 1984
- « Les Places d’Europe. Histoire et Actualité d’un Espace Public », Centre Pompidou, Paris, France. 1984
- « Image et imaginaire de l’architecture », Centre Pompidou, Paris, France. 1984
- « Architecture et industrie. Passé et avenir d’un mariage de raison », Centre Pompidou, Paris, France. 1984
- « Follies: Architecture for the late XX century landscape”, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, U.S.A. 1983
- « El Jardí del Turia. Metamorfosi della Cittá tra Cultura e Natura. Un esempio spagnolo”, Palazzo Braschi, Rome, Italy. 1983
- “Modern Islamic Architecture”, Biennale Venice, Italy. 1982
- “El Jardí del Turia” , Palau Lonja Valencia, Spain. 1982
- T”he Presence of the Past”, The International Architecture Exhibition from the Venice Biennale, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, U.S.A. 1982
- “Présence de l’histoire », Chapelle de la Salpêtrière, Paris, France. 1981
- « Projets français 1971-1981.La Cité: Histoire et Technologie », Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, Paris, France. 1981
- « Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura », Architectural Association, London, England. 1981
- « La Strada Novissima », Biennale Venezia, Italy. 1980
- « Taller de Arquitectura”, Centro de Arte y de Cultura, Buenos Aires, Argentina. 1976