Les Espaces D’Abraxas. Photo courtesy of Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura.

In light of the ‘rediscovery’ of Ricardo Bofill’s work in the era of social media, it was a brilliant move by Gestalten - a publishing house firmly committed to the coffee table book genre, with titles including Northern Comfort: the Nordic Art of Creative Living and Bohemian Residence: Metropolitan Apartments and Interior Design - to make the last 60 years of work by Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura their most recent focus. With gorgeously reproduced photographs of gorgeously produced architecture, Ricardo Bofill: Visions of Architecture, will be as desirable a coffee table book as any other today.

@bofillarquitectura, the official Instagram profile run by spanish firm Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura, currently has over 107,000 followers. A quick glance at their profile makes it easy to see why: photos of vintage, elaborate geometries, awash in rough-hewn stucco and vibrant pinks and baby blues. The scale, complexity and unapologetic optimism unique to Ricardo Bofill’s work makes it the ideal backdrop for any contemporary photo shoot (particularly among those in fashion, and especially among those with a significant social media following of their own).

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Though his architecture is beloved by Spanish local and Instagrammer alike - and is in fact being rediscovered for its timeless beauty - it has also historically either been withheld from historical accounts of 20th century architecture or swiftly cast aside. In Prospects for a Critical Regionalism (1983), for example, Kenneth Frampton wrote that it is Bofill’s work that “Catalonian Regionalism finds its most extreme manifestation,” and that Walden 7, one of the firm’s most well-known social-housing projects, “denotes that delicate boundary where an initially sound impulse degenerates into an ineffective Populism - a Populism whose ultimate aim is not to provide a livable and significant environment but rather to achieve a highly photogenic form of scenography.”

In light of the ‘rediscovery’ of Ricardo Bofill’s work in the era of social media, it was a brilliant move by Gestalten - a publishing house firmly committed to the coffee table book genre, with titles including Northern Comfort: the Nordic Art of Creative Living and Bohemian Residence: Metropolitan Apartments and Interior Design - to make the last 60 years of work by Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura their most recent focus. With gorgeously reproduced photographs of gorgeously produced architecture, Ricardo Bofill: Visions of Architecture, will be as desirable a coffee table book as any other today.

Visions of Architecture is decidedly not only a book for the Instagram influencer, but also the reader genuinely fascinated by the thought processes behind the architect’s distinct body of work.

What comes as a surprise, however, is the inclusion of the long-form essays that preface the book, as well as the thoughtful descriptions accompanying each project. Visions of Architecture is decidedly not only a book for the Instagram influencer, but also the reader genuinely fascinated by the thought processes behind the architect’s distinct body of work.

Douglas Murphy’s essay grounds the firm’s work against the criticism it had typically received during its prime. “Bofill was accused of betraying modernism, of cynicism and bomast, “Murphy writes, “but a closer look at the work of the Taller in the early years reveals a situation far less clear cut.” As the firm was “rejecting Le Corbusier’s urbanism and drawing on advances in the social sciences,” Murphy explains, “they were trying to create housing that could incorporate and enrich existing ways of life in new forms, rather than forcing upon residents something totally unprecedented. Other architects were experimenting with these ideas, but the Taller’s work expressed a formal and chromatic exuberance that was remarkable at the time.”

Flipping through the pages of Visions of Architecture will indeed make it apparent to the reader that Bofill’s career is truly among the most enviable in modern architecture.

It is likely this attitude that allowed the firm to develop such a robust portfolio of work, especially when compared to the equally idealistic architects they were working alongside in the 1960s. Reflecting on the completion of Les Espaces D’Abraxas, the enormous housing project in Marne-La-Valleée, France, he said that he was “beginning to understand how vital it is for an architect to build. Theory and design are necessary but insufficient for someone wishing to take part in the history of architecture.” Flipping through the pages of Visions of Architecture will indeed make it apparent to the reader that Bofill’s career is truly among the most enviable in modern architecture.

While some projects, such as the famous La Muralla Roja development, receive over 30 pages of text and full-spread imagery, others are featured all too briefly. Though the firm’s Chicago skyscraper and Barcelona Airport terminal are impressive in their own right, they only receive two spreads each in the otherwise generously detailed monograph. The firm produced no small projects, and especially none without several idiosyncrasies worthy of attention.

The projects that are featured extensively, however, allow the reader to become fully immersed in them and appreciate the stars that had to align in order for the firm to receive such monumental commissions. Looking through its 60 year history, it is clear that the work of Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura deserves the rediscovery it has gained in recent years. One can guess how much Bofill’s hard work has paid off by the substantial feature of La Fábrica, the abandoned concrete factory just outside of Barcelona the architect transformed into his palatial home and studio. Even with the dozens of photos and testimonials of the project, it remains difficult to believe that a home of such staggering beauty can exist.

In fact, this may be the ultimate purpose of the book: to prove that these seemingly impossible projects were possible in the late modern era, and that equally grand structures can and should lie ahead.