Cultured Magazine

Summer 2014

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Practicing a brand of culturally sensi- tive, populist architecture for more than 50 years, Barcelona-based Ricardo Bofill is one of Europe's beloved deans of creativity. According to the 49- year-old who inherited Bofill's name, the multidi- mensionality that endeared the architect to the masses also made him a great parent. Although Ricardo Bofill Jr. always knew he would carry on the family business, his father encouraged culti- vating other interests to lend greater meaning to his design contributions. In turn, after years of model making and drafting at Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura (RBTA), the younger Bofill took a break to write three novels and produce the Spanish feature film Hot Milk. "I wanted to explore narrative," Bofill says of this period, noting that his long-held inter- est in the storytelling potential buildings possess traces to his days as an architecture undergrad at Rice University. He returned to the fold in 2004, and today he is a principal of RBTA. The title is well earned. The firm's design of the W Barcelona, which opened in 2009, was "the first project where I re- ally had an influence," Bofill recalls of his narra- tive approach to design. The 26-story building is better known as Hotel Vela, and that resemblance to a sail is pregnant with significance—about Barcelona's millennia-long reliance on the sea, its port's post-industrial role, and the infrastructure revitalization begun for the 1992 Summer Olympic Games. The architect cites a redevelop- ment zone in Prague's Karlin district and the new Barcelona headquarters of fast-fashion brand Desigual as subsequent points of pride. More recently, Bofill and his 33-year-old brother, Pablo, have been occupied with flattening the RBTA organization. To encourage the convic- tion that great ideas can come from any corner of the office, the next-generation duo is remaking its urban design studio into a think tank. Their fore- most cause is biomimicry, the imitation of natural biological designs, in city planning. Com petition master plans for Dallas and Moscow balanced human growth with habitat conservation, while tapping the wisdom of the cities' original ecosys- tems by proposing, for example, site-appropriate clean-energy generation schemes. The research behind this work has gotten Bofill so enthused that he says biomimicry is his new source of inspiration for form-making overall. "New understandings of technology and nature have to be integrated into the narrative of archi- tecture," he says. The Venice Biennale offers his next oppor- tunity to share this philosophy of building symbi- otically with the environment. As part of "Time Space Existence" at the Palazzo Bembo, Bofill will recount how the 150-year-old Barcelona for- mer cement factory known as La Fábrica has been transformed from an agent of pollution into the Bofills' hanging garden-like home and work- space. The exhibition also will envision how the facility may serve city and ecology when this first family of Spanish architecture is just a cherished memory. 158 CULTURED A sketch by Ricardo Bofill of RBTA's W Barcelona. "New understandings of technology and nature have to be integrated into the narrative of architecture." —Ricardo Bofill

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