Ricardo Bofill

Born in late 1939, just after the end of the Spanish Civil War, Ricardo Bofill grew up in a well-to-do family with deep Catalan and Barcelonian roots. His grandfather Josep Maria Bofill i Pichot (1860–1938) had been involved in prominent local institutions such as the Institute for Catalan Studies, the Catalan Institute of Natural History, and the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona. His father Emilio Bofill (1907–2000) was an architect, builder, and developer who studied at Escola Tècnica Superior d'Arquitectura de Barcelona, Catalonia's oldest professional architecture school. Ricardo Bofill would later describe him as "republican, liberal, progressive, austere and logical." Ricardo's mother, Maria Levi (1909–1991), was an Italian of Jewish descent born in Venice, who became a prominent sponsor of Catalan literature and culture in post-war Barcelona. His sister Anna Bofill Leví is an architect, composer, pianist, and author.

Bofill went to school at the Escola Virtèlia from 1942, the Catholic Escuela Andersen in Barcelona from 1949, then at the Lycée français de Barcelone in the 1950s. He spent much of his youth traveling, first with his family and later on his own, and developed a passion for vernacular architecture. In 1957 he enrolled at the Escola Tècnica Superior d'Arquitectura de Barcelona, where he engaged in student activism with the unauthorized Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia, and was soon arrested in a demonstration and expelled from the university and from Spain. He moved to Switzerland and enrolled at the Haute École d'art et de design Genève in 1958, which he left in 1960 to return to Spain. His first architecture design was a summer home in Ibiza, completed in 1960. In 1961-1962 he went into Spanish military service for nine months. He was again arrested and briefly incarcerated on political grounds in Barcelona in 1964.

Books about Bofill and his work

José Agustín Goytisolo, Taller de Arquitectura: poemas. Barcelona: Blume, 1976

Ricardo Bofill, Projets Français 1978-1981. Paris: L’Equerre, 1981

Annabelle D’Huart, Ricardo Bofill, Los Espacios de Abraxas, El Palacio, El Teatro, El Arco. Paris: L’Equerre, 1981

“Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura”. Global Architecture No.4, New York: Rizzoli International, 1985

"The City: Classicism and Technology". Max Protetch Gallery. Artforum 4, 1986

Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura: Edificios y proyectos 1960-1984. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 1988

Warren A. James, Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura: Buildings and Projects 1960-1984. New York: Rizzoli, 1988

Annabelle D’Huart, Ricardo Bofill. Paris: Editions du Moniteur, 1989

Ricardo Bofill. Barcelona Airport. Milan: Edizioni Tecno, 1991

Jean-Louis André and Patrick Genard, Swift, Architecture & Technologie. Taller Design, 1991

Bartomeu Cruells, Ricardo Bofill: Obras y Proyectos. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili 1992

Memory-Future. Barcelona: Taller de Arquitectura, 1993

Bartomeu Cruells, Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura. Bologna: Zanichelli Editore, 1994

Bofill met Italian actress Serena Vergano in 1962; their son Ricardo Emilio Bofill was born in 1965.

In the 1970s, Bofill dated Yves Saint Laurent muse and fashion designer Loulou de la Falaise.

Bofill and French visual artist Annabelle d'Huart had a son, Pablo Bofill, born in 1980. Both of his sons eventually worked with their father at Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura, and are co-leading the firm as of January 2022. From the 1990s, Bofill lived in Barcelona together with Catalan designer Marta de Vilallonga. In October 2021, he was named in the Pandora Papers.

He died from complications linked to COVID-19 in Barcelona on 14 January 2022, at the age of 82.