Staggering staircases, almost distorted spaces, doorways that lead to nowhere, corridors of contrasting pink and blue... This is the prototype of the staircase space in the fire TV series "Squid Game" and a realistic portrayal of the video game "Monument Valley" - one of the Instagram must-check attractions, Spain's "Red Wall Apartment" (La Muralla Roja). Half a century after its construction, it uses a psychedelic world of sculpture to refocus the world's attention on its designer, the Spanish architect Ricardo Pofi.
▲ Bofi in the studio.
Known for his ever-changing design aesthetic, he makes extensive use of classical elements and postmodernist ideas, and his works are found in dozens of countries including France, Spain, the United States, Japan, and Russia. Pofi died on January 14 at the age of 82 due to complications from COVID-19. In his eulogy, his firm praised Pofi for his "ability to question the mainstream ideas of architecture, his varied style, its ability to blend perfectly with local contexts, and a strong spirit of innovation and adventure," while The Guardian praised him for "spending his life creating otherworldly buildings" and erecting monuments that seemed to come from the primitive science fiction civilization of the future.
▲ The red-walled apartment, completed in 1973, has now become a popular punch card.
▲ Xanadu apartment building located next to the red-walled apartment.
Born in Catalonia to an architect and an art patron to a mother, Pofi developed an interest in architectural design from an early age and was influenced by the Spanish political environment to obsess over utopian concepts. In 1963, Porffi assembled a team of architects, engineers, philosophers, writers, sociologists and filmmakers to try to create alternative architectural styles in an interdisciplinary way, and the resulting Walden 7 became one of the most experimental works of contemporary architecture in Spain.
Drawing inspiration from Thoreau's novel Walden lake and psychologist B.F. Skinner's utopian science fiction novel Taoyuan Ii Village, Pofi designed a complex of buildings like alien towers from the aspects of housing function and community psychology. The 450 apartments are arranged in dense complexes, connected by bridges and balconies, each floor covering public spaces such as gardens and terraces, forming a dramatic three-dimensional view and wall matrix, and the complex structure makes the overall building feel like a vertical labyrinth. It's pofi's experiment with a vision of a utopian collaborative community that wants to adapt to changing home needs through a modular design. The Walden 7 has earned Bofi a huge reputation, "when I was 35 years old, I was the most fashionable architect in the world", and Pofi once boasted to the Guardian about his architectural achievements without modesty.
The complex of "Walden 7" is connected by different "streets", named after famous figures of the 20th century such as Chaplin, Marx or Kafka.
Outside of the building, Pofi did not have a good time. Because Spain was still under dictatorship in the 1980s, Pofi's staunch anti-dictatorship stance ostracized him, canceling several design projects and even being told at one point that "buildings in Spain will never be built." Pofi traveled to France to find a new way out and built a series of public rental housing projects in Paris.
Les Arcades du Lac, the first large-scale condominium project in which Porfie participated in France.
Les Espaces d'Abraxas condominium project.
One of his most iconic designs, the "Les Espaces d'Abraxas", divides the community into three distinct areas, "theatre", "arc" and "palace", in which 441 residential units are housed. By combining historical elements with modern design, the Baroque details of the giant stone pillar cornices alleviate the unity of the postmodern mass residence, creating a theatrical stage for daily life. The New York Times architecture critic Paul Goldberg once commented that "Porfy combined the French instinct for monumentality with the current populist tendencies of the nation" and considered his creation "the most important architectural work of this generation in Paris".
The "Palace" complex of the Les Espaces d'Abraxas project was used as a filming location for the 1985 films Brazil and The Hunger Games: Mockingbirds.
But Pofi also admits that he has only partially succeeded in France, but that utopian ideals have failed in reality. Multiple architectural projects, including "Abrahas Space," eventually became synonymous with "overly pompous postmodernism," derided as "looking like a Stalinist Disneyland," and the building even faced a crisis of demolition at one point in 2006. In a 2014 interview with Le Monde, Porfie confessed, "I failed... You think you're going to change the city, but in the end nothing happens. ”
▲ The surrealist building "Kafka Castle" created by Pofi pays tribute to the novelist Kafka.
▲ The Church of Our Lady of Andorra, in which the Pofi team participated in the reconstruction in 1972.
Bofi has said that he has "always been an outsider, never integrated into architectural culture", he does not like architectural theory, prefer local culture. He rejected the world's blind pursuit of postmodernism, rejected the stereotype of architectural style, and only pursued the peace and quiet that architecture brings. He has said his goal is to "create a space that is powerful enough to make ordinary people who know nothing about architecture aware of its existence." After being sought after and ridiculed, Pofi's architecture was once again favored by a new generation of pop culture, receiving attention through film and television works such as "The Hunger Games" and "Westworld".
▲ Pofi's own RBTA studio La Fabrica, its predecessor is the Barcelona cement factory.
Architecture critic Catherine Slasso called him "the undisputed immortal king" and "his housing complex became synonymous with 'hysteria' in reality and in movies". Fans reveled in the overwhelming visual impact of Pofi's architecture and praised his design ingenuity and dreamy beauty. "There are two things that made me an architect, one is that I have claustrophobia, and architecture can help me escape from it, and the other is that I want to live forever." Bofi once recalled the original intention of the profession, and with the new round of "Bofi revival", his dream of immortality may have been realized.