ARCHITECTS IN IBIZA: RICARDO BOFILL

ARCHITECTS IN IBIZA: RICARDO BOFILL

 

“Nomade, je suis devenu un nomade“.

(Espaces d´un vie)

 

 

 

SUMMER HOUSE IN CALA NOVA

 

A tireless and frequent traveler to the island since his adolescence, he carried out his first project in Ibiza. A small, very organic vacation house, with which he discovered the vernacular architecture of the island.

 

 

Photography. RBTA.

Text by @dosmares_ibiza and Daniel Foraster

---

Ricardo Bofill Levi, a Barcelona architect born in 1939, founded a heterogeneous group made up of architects, engineers, sociologists and philosophers of different nationalities, laying the foundations for what is today Ricardo Bofill. Architecture Workshop.

Over forty years they have carried out projects of all kinds: urban design, architecture, park and garden designs, and interior design. Furthermore, with this team, Bofill tackled projects of diverse nature in different parts of the world, adapting them to the cultural realities of each place. In 1978 he opened a second office in Paris.

His first project was a small holiday home in Ibiza, an organic house with thick curved walls and small windows that captured the “genius locii”, the idiosyncrasy, of the place.

Next he carried out other projects, mainly in Barcelona, ​​such as Walden 7, the Hotel Wl. terminal T1 of Barcelona Airport, the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, etc. And many others in different parts of the planet where he always respected local architecture such as France, Algeria, Central Africa, Russia, India, China, Japan, the United States…

“We were asked to design a house that formed an integral part of the landscape, without breaking with the local architectural tradition. Taking into account that vernacular architecture in Ibiza was the clearest and most direct response to the vital needs of the Ibizans, we tried to respond with the same architectural expression to another series of needs. We try to understand the essence of traditional Ibizan architecture, the way in which its people, its climate, its landscape, its materials interact to create this architectural expression.

Respecting the “genius loci” we designed a house where we tried to modulate each of the spaces;Despite the space delimited by its exterior walls, the design team was inspired at all times by the relationship between interior and exterior space. The team’s intention was to modulate each of the interior environments of the house and its correlation with the exterior, in order to counteract the static effect of the facades.”

The fascination with the local is combined with an organic international style, expressed through thick curved walls, pierced by small windows. The team paid special attention to the facades to organically modulate the exterior envelope of the house. The interior is austere and magically sober.

“The program of this single-family house had to fulfill the double function of accommodating a single person at one time, and at other times, a series of guests. The team solved this problem by creating two independent nuclei that share the kitchen The two cores are completely separated, but are connected by an open covered porch, so that the house can function homogeneously, either partially or completely“

It was his studio, office and home, an old cement factory that seduced him by the contradictions, by the ambiguity of a space that had undergone a series of extensions as the different production chains required it.

In this way he created a multifunctional place in which he wanted to maintain its surreal essence and, like in an Escher painting, there are stairs that lead nowhere. In Bofill’s own words, it is characterized by its abstraction, “in its pure volumes, which often appear broken” and by its brutalism, “in the abrupt treatment and sculptural qualities of the materials.”

It was one of his most emblematic and controversial first projects. A building intended for social housing with which, with an unusual budget, he wanted to solve the problems in cities and create a place that stimulated the activity of a community within the public space.

The building was conceived as a vertical kasbah and contrasts with the mediocrity of its surroundings, thus stimulating community life inside. This residential building includes 446 apartments distributed over fourteen floors and grouped around five patios; plus two rooftop pools. Each apartment has views of both the exterior and the interior patios. It is also characterized by having a complex system of bridges and balconies at different levels that facilitate access to the plants, thus offering a fantastic variety of landscapes.

 

Ricardo Bofill was looking for a way to transform society through architecture, through inhabited space as a place dedicated to personal transformation. In this way, he gave the opportunity to systems and ways of inhabiting spaces outside the orthodoxy of the bourgeoisie of the time, transgressing the classic urban and architectural norms to which he opposed various readings in the public and private sphere.

After his death, in January 2022, the activity of his Architecture Workshop continues with the help of his sons Ricardo Emilio and Pablo.