Renowned architect Ricardo Bofill recently passed at the age of 82. Curbed takes a look at his work and life.
For many people, their introduction to the work of Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill comes from the image of his grand social housing project, the monumental and colonnaded Espaces d’Abraxas, standing in as the dystopian headquarters in Brazil and The Hunger Games. For others, the pastel pink walls of La Muralla Roja serve as a frequent Instagram photo-shoot location, or more recently, as a visual reference for the interlocking stairs in Netflix’s Squid Game series. While the dystopian associations with Bofill’s work may be cemented by pop culture, there’s a lot of color and wonder that’s missing from that imagery, which is perhaps unfair to those projects that were intent on making great architecture for all (and, in many cases, were successful at it).