Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura

Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura
Industry Architecture
Founded 1963
Founder Ricardo Bofill
Headquarters Barcelona, Spain
Area served
 International
Key people
 Ricardo Bofill
Website www.ricardobofill.com
Ricardo Bofill Taller de arquitectura La Fabrica Barcelona Spain

Founded over 50 years ago, Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura (RBTA) is headquartered in a re-purposed cement factory in Barcelona, referred to as ”La Fabrica”.[1] El Taller consists of a diverse team of architects and urban planner, graphic designers and economists, from over 20 countries. To date, the firm has over 1000 projects in over 40 countries.

Founding

Founded in 1963 by Ricardo Bofill, Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura brought together a multidisciplinary team consisting of architects, engineers, planners, sociologist, writers, movie makers and philosophers.[2] “The firm recuperated the characteristic craftsmanship of traditional Catalan architecture (Catalan Modernism), while proposing spaces that defied the time’s cultural, social and architectural norms. Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura sought to resolve local urban planning problems, within the Spanish political and social context. In the context of the standardized methods and utilization of Modernism for the mass reconstruction of housing and urban planning schemes following World War II, El Taller’s work differentiates from the standard approach, as defined by the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM). The necessity to approach large scale projects, led El Taller to conceive a ridged yet organic methodology based on the geometric formation of elements in space”.[3]

Key Staff

Ricardo Bofill

In 1963 Ricardo Bofill joined his family business, forming the Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura. Since its founding, he serves as Director and Chairman of the firms’ numerous offices throughout the world. Born in 1939 in Barcelona, Spain, he studied at the Barcelona University School of Architecture and graduated from the School of Geneva. He is an honorary AIA member, and has won numerous awards throughout the world for architecture. Further, he is a published author, co-writing Espaces d’une vie and L’Architecture des Villes.[4]

Peter Hodgkinson

Hodgkinson is a Partner architect and has been with El Taller since 1966. He was born in England in 1940, and received his degree from the Architectural Academy in London. He has published in numerous specialized journals such as: AR, AD, Record, etc., and spoken as guest lecturer in: Australia, South Africa, England, France, the Netherlands, Scotland, etc.[5]

He has been involved with and studied all facets of architectural project design, with especial emphasis on transport infrastructures, airports in particular, where he has gained considerable experience in solving functional problems involving flows and circulations.[6]

Jean-Pierre Carniaux

Carniaux is a Partner architect and has been with El Taller since 1976, heading the practice former offices in New York City in 1986. He was born in France in 1951 and studied mathematics at Université de Paris and Architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Jean-Pierre Carniaux’s design work in the last fifteen years ranges from the design of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, a 240.000 m2 mixed-use development for a district of Montpellier, Antigone District and the Shiseido Headquarter in Tokyo to the design of perfume bottles for Christian Dior.[7] He has participated in the projects of the new airport of Barcelona, a 50 floors skyscraper in Chicago, and a Palace of Congress in Madrid.[8] His work has taken him to Moscow, Paris, New York City, Montreal, Tokyo, not to mention many other cities in France.

La Fabrica

The conversion of the factory into the studio is a process of destruction as a means of creating space. Numerous elements and structures of the former industrial plant were demolished, revealing previous hidden forms.[9]

What remains now is "a hybrid—Memory and Future", as Bofill explains.[10] The remaining 8 silos, which became offices, a models laboratory, archives, a library, a projections room and a gigantic space known as ”The Cathedral", used for exhibitions, concerts and a whole range of cultural functions linked to the professional activities of the architect.

Once the spaces were defined, cleared of concrete and surrounded by a new landscape setting, the next step was to invent a new program for the use of these spaces. The project is a practical negation of functionalism: the function did not create the form, but proved that any space can be allocated to whichever use the architect chooses.

The renovation project incorporated various architectural languages; Catalan Gothic Revival Architecture and Surrealism elements that reflects the building’s industrial past.

Today, ”La Fábrica” functions as work space for el Taller, office and open plan studio space, secluded meeting area and a private residence for Ricardo Bofill, surrounded by multiple gardens.

Approach


General Approach

The firm specific design methodology, formalized within the last 50 years, focuses on the dialogue between the architect, local developers and local partners. Bofill claims that by engaging all stakeholders through out the entire process, from the very inception, until after the project is completed, el Taller’s works are defined by the necessities and desires of those who inhabit them. This singular approach allows El Taller to address all projects, both small- scale private and large- scale urban, with equal rigour.[11]

A constant theme dictates Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura’s work, regardless of location, decade or typology—that of, what the firm itself refers to as ‘Memory-Future.’ "Its work draws upon the past, referencing local histories, classical compositions, and/ or traditional building methods, while imagining and innovating stylistically and programmatically to meet the needs and desires of the community that is yet to inhabit these spaces. The present, the designing of these spaces, lies between retrospect and prospect—Memory –Future ».[12]

The use of a historical perspective in its design approach allows the team for continual analysis and interpretation of a given culture and its architectural heritage. In contrast to Socialist and Le Corbusier#urbanism urban planning models, Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura proposes a Mediterranean city model. Such model is defined by a network of public space that connects proportionally scaled streets and squares.[13] “Mediterranean city” is at the same time cast as an interregional synthesis, a complex region of interrelating regions. This intense set of cultural, social and material interactions highlights the capitalist and cosmopolitan dimensions of the Mediterranean.”[14]

In his book ”Espaces d'une vie” Ricardo Bofill states, ”it is essential to recover the discipline developed during the Renaissance—city design. Personally, I support a strategy of controlled, organized, properly planned urban growth (…) my involvement has always been guided by the same principles—to lay out a city in line with the ideas of Ildefons Sardà, the civil engineer who designed Barcelona's magnificent grid-patterned district known as the Eixample. Urban sprawl must have its limits and should not, under the guise of continuity, annex other towns. Urban design must be reintroduced in existing districts by isolating, preserving and renovating certain areas, turning them into real communities with shopping centers, squares, streets, facades and of course, boundaries”.[15]

The recurrence of mixed-use cities in their works, with, as the firm refers to as, ”integrated urbanism” suggests El Taller strong conviction that a city equally belongs to and is shared amongst all socio- economic classes.

1960s-1970s (Critical Regionalism)

El Taller’s early works are characteristic of vernacular architecture, referencing traditional Catalan architecture; as seen in Bofill’s residence in Ibiza, a seaside residence that utilizes local materials and construction methods. This architectural strategy applies a geometric logic towards the organization of elements in space. Developed first in a theoretical manner with the project The City in Space, the formal approach found its concrete manifestation in 1975 with the construction of subsidized housing project Walden 7. The apartment complex comprises a 14-story cluster of 446 units that maximize both scale and intricacy. In an article for Architectural Design, Vincent Scully described Walden 7 as a wildly expressionistic apartment house, part Gaudí, part Archigram.[16] Repeating apartment modules, with private micro terraces and connected via striking interior public courtyards, were intended to provoke a rethinking of social housing.

Kafka Castle is located in Sant Pere de Ribes, Spain, and completed in 1968. The project is an homage to Franz Kafka. Rather than a development through site, plan, and context, Bofill implemented a series of mathematical equations that generated the positions of all ninety dwellings, as well as the building’s siting. Though Kafka Castle maintains some programmatic similarities of a typical Spanish apartment block, the design of the apartment complex differs greatly. Prefabricated cubes are assembled together, based on two mathematical equations that generate their placement with relationship to a vertical circulation towers. Muralla Roja, built in 1973, continues the firm’s investigation on the organic manifestation of form, the imposition of defined criteria and condition, and locus. Color defines each structural function, serving as tectonic place finders for the labyrinth- like edifice. Despite its constructionist aesthetic, Muralla Roja is a clear reference to the Mediterranean architectural roots, particularly North African adobe towers and Kasbah.

The experimental prototype Xanadu reflects the team’s theory of a garden city in space. The building is intended to create a castle, manifesting in the form of the Peñon de Ifach rock located nearby[17] The modules possess vernacular details, curving handrails, and roof elements, synthesizing modernist principles with traditional aesthetics.[18]

In the early 1970s, El Taller began to collaborate with the Algerian government on topics related to the urban planning and housing fields. This early work in Algeria culminates two years later with the construction of the vernacular housing project, Houari Boumédienne Agricultural Village, in the south-eastern part of the country.

1970s-1980s (Modern Classicalism)

In tandem with efforts in Spain and Algeria, a complimentary team began working in Paris in 1971, creating various projects for the French New Towns.[19] The headquarters is moved to Paris, and El Taller shifts its focus onto the industrialized construction of social housing and master planning. During this phase, symbolic elements are incorporated into the buildings and plans, which reference the style of French monumental architecture. Bofill assessed the need of some permanent and integral form of wall covering for future buildings with columns, pilasters, rustication, pediments, cornices and balustrades.[20]

In the self-published book, Memory-Future, El Taller reasons its use of classical proportion and form, because it allowed for the in-depth investigation of the articulation between historic memory and freedom, of conception and expression. For this purpose, it has created a dictionary, a grammar and a language applied to architectural composition, ”rewriting" the western, classical vocabulary.[21]

The urban housing proposals, La Petite Cathédrale and Les Espaces D’ Abraxas, represent the spectrum of social living ideas integrated into these inhabited monuments. Les Espaces D’ Abraxas[22] also delves into the manipulation of classical forms of architecture.[23]

The simultaneous construction of four projects REF– Les Arcades du Lac and Le Viaduc in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, Le Palais d’Abraxas, Le Théâtre, and L’Arc in Marne-la-Vallée, Les Echelles du Baroque in Paris, and Antigone in Montpellier – mark one of El Taller’s most prolific periods. Built over two decades, the Antigone district of Montpellier encompasses 4 million square feet of mixed-use development. The large-scale urban master plan is typical of the Mediterranean. “Using classical architecture to provide human scale and proportion, Antigone intends to breaks up the monotony of precast construction to generate a palace for the people. It is the classical language rethought and reconstituted in terms of the contemporary industrial technique of precast concrete construction, assembled piece by piece in a discrete order even more systematic than that sustained in the older, carved and hand-modelled way of classical building.”[24]


1990-Today (Integrated Urbanism)

Ricado Bofill describes the firm’s work as varying “from a Mediterranean and European type of urbanism of urban continuity to an American type of urbanism made up of separate pieces as well as the combination of both types. At the same time, the "Taller" has been able to adapt from neighbourhood scale to city design. Each city, as is also true of individuals, has its own identity and personality: this provides the key element for its own urban project.”[25]

El Taller works with city and government officials and private developers to help rethink city’s growth, through the structure of master planning. Notably, el Taller partook in the large- scale master plan competitions such as the Boston Central Artery, which resulted in the Big Dig; 2012’s Moscow Agglomeration’s Extension, sought to move the Federal Center outside of the Kremlin and doubled the city’s boundaries; and most recently Dallas’ Connected City Design Challenge, which attempts to help regenerate the city center and connect it to a new river park.

Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura utilizes urban design as the “instrument for spatial organization, in keeping with the great Italian and French classical tradition in which the mixture of uses gives the city shape. A street, a plaza, a park are essential parts of the design. Mixed use and a new theory on centrality become determining forces.”[26] Several key projects in European cities are the physical manifestations of these investigations. Turia Gardens, located in Valencia, Spain, La Porte, located at the Kirchberg Plateau in Luxemburg and The Crescent, located on the waterfront of Salerno, Italy, are urban cores that appear modern yet maintain the Greco- Roman, mixed organization of city centralities.

The firm carries this same philosophy across continents, but infuses each locus’ native culture into its stylistic design. Tokyo’s Kawazaki Plaza, is a shopping center that integrates itself with a metro hub and its clean, modern design can stylistically be seen as a reflection on the culture’s fast paced, technologically obsessed way of life. Alternatively, the New Mohammad IV Polytechnic University, expected to be completed in 2014, maintains the traditional Islamic materials, forms and decorations of Moroccan architecture, but transforms them through a progressive use of proportion and plan. This suggests the intention of the university, which fosters innovation within its own culture and people.[27]

Since the 1980s and 1990s, much of Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura’s work deviates from the regional criticalism that the firm became notable for. It is a derivation from classicalism: while the focus of these buildings is on steel technology and efficiency, ell Taller maintains the use of classical proportion for each structure’s composition 77 West Wacker Drive, built in 1992 and currently functioning as United Airlines Headquarters, located in Chicago, is designed to emulate a Greek temple, only stretched into the form of a skyscraper. The tower maintains all elements of a classical column—forming a base, vertical expanse and crown. Similarly, the Paris Headquarters of BNP Paribas, maintains the classical form of a temple, but is completely constructed of glass and steel.

Many of el Taller’s more recent projects maintain classical proportions but emphasize cultural and functional representation, and technology. The Shiseido Headquarters, in the heart of the Ginza District, in Tokyo, is designed to be both a reflection of the brand identity and traditional Japanese construction. In Barcelona, the W Hotel Barcelona, locally known as La Vela, also mixes this diversity.

Ricardo Bofill Taller de arquitectura new barcelona airport terminal 1

The recent completion of Terminal 1 of the Barcelona Airport, through its design and utilization of glass and steel maximizes operational and energy efficiency requisite for an international airport terminal.

While Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura works on all types of projects, from master plans to luxury residences, the core of its business and interest remains in social housing, which it continues to design across the world.[28] El Taller still employs prefabrication as a means of constructing substantial quantities of housing and continues to utilize “classical composition to resolve the monotony of pre-fabrication”, as seen in The Hague’s Monchyplein.

Selected Projects

Commercial

Office

Transport Infrastructures

Masterplans

Culture And Sports Infrastructures

Landscaping

Housing

Government

Honours and Awards

References

  1. ↑ http://www.archdaily.com/294077/the-factory-ricardo-bofill/
  2. ↑ Vincent Scully assesses the radical classicism of the Spanish architect's housing projects.Architectural Digest, v45, no.n4, 1988 April, pS59(3) (ISSN 0003-8520)
  3. ↑ http://www.ricardbofill.com Ricardo Bofill Website
  4. ↑ http://www.e-architect.co.uk/architects/ricardo-bofill-architect
  5. ↑ http://eng.archinform.net/arch/12367.htm
  6. ↑ http://www.arcspace.com/features/ricardo-bofill-/taller-de-arquitectura-barcelona-airport-terminal-1-/
  7. ↑ http://www.archello.com/en/project/parfums-christian-dior-headquarters/977177 Parfums Christian Dior Headquarters
  8. ↑ Ricardo Bofill - Madrid Congress Center
  9. ↑ http://www.archdaily.com/550199/in-residence-ricardo-bofill/
  10. ↑ ”Memory-Future". Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura. Brescia, Punto Grafico s.d, 1993.
  11. ↑ “Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura : Towards a Human Vernacular.” By Borges, Sofia. Berlin, Germany 2013.
  12. ↑ ”Memory-Future". Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura. Brescia, Punto Grafico s.d, 1993.
  13. ↑ http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/10511/1/HAIFA_2008.pdf
  14. ↑ http://research.gsd.harvard.edu/nglab/events/the-mediterranean/
  15. ↑ “Espaces d'une vie” by Ricardo Bofill andJean-Louis André. Paris, Editions Odile Jacob, 1989.
  16. ↑ “Vincent Scully assesses the radical classicism of the Spanish architect's housing projects.” Architectural Digest, v45, no.n4, 1988 April,pS59(3) (ISSN 0003-8520)
  17. ↑ http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1389
  18. ↑ Key Houses of the Twentieth Century: Plans, Sections and Elevations, p. RA2-PA16, at Google Books
  19. ↑ http://housingprototypes.org/project?File_No=FRA010
  20. ↑ “Vincent Scully assesses the radical classicism of the Spanish architect's housing projects.” Architectural Digest, v45, no.n4, 1988 April, pS59(3) (ISSN 0003-8520)“ Espaces d'une vie” by Ricardo Bofill and Jean-Louis André. Paris, Editions Odile Jacob, 1989.
  21. ↑ ”Memory-Future". Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura. Brescia, Punto Grafico s.d, 1993.
  22. ↑ fr:Espaces d'Abraxas
  23. ↑ http://archinect.com/ricardo_bofill_taller_arquitectura/project/les-espaces-d-abraxas
  24. ↑ “Vincent Scully assesses the radical classicism of the Spanish architect's housing projects.” Architectural Digest, v45, no.n4, 1988 April, pS59(3) (ISSN 0003-8520)
  25. ↑ ”Memory-Future". Ricardo Bofill Taller deArquitectura. Brescia, Punto Grafico s.d, 1993.
  26. ↑ ”Memory-Future". Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura. Brescia, PuntoGrafico s.d, 1993.
  27. ↑ http://www.archdaily.com/509110/venice-biennale-2014-100-architects-to-discuss-time-space-existence/537e3ce2c07a80946d00018b_venice-biennale-2014-100-architects-to-discuss-time-space-existence-_ricardo_bofill_-_school_of_industrial_management-jpg/
  28. ↑ “Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura : Towards a Human Vernacular.” By Borges, Sofia. Berlin, Germany 2013.
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