Located on the outskirts of Barcelona, the converted cement factory La Fábrica houses Taller de Arquitectura (RBTA) while also serving as the Bofill family's home. From a polluting industrial complex to an unparalleled laboratory of ideas, La Fábrica stands as RBTA's built manifesto, its legacy and its headquarters. It is here that the architects and designers of RBTA have developed a distinctive architectural vocabulary capable of interpreting a world in constant transformation, while cultivating the expertise and cultural sensitivity of the practice's multidisciplinary and exceptionally versatile team.
Ricardo Bofill Levi, the founder of the practice, first encountered the cement factory in 1973. Still operational at the time, the 31,000-square-metre industrial complex was scheduled for demolition just one month later. For the architect, it was the perfect opportunity to fulfil his desire for space. By taking care of the derelict factory, he would offer it a second life. The project sought to transform it into a bridge between two worlds: the Fordist model of production and the post-material society. Through its present function, La Fábrica inherits and safeguards the creative force that shaped the modern periphery of Western nations, while embracing a sensitivity to the changing needs of societies and marginalised cultures.
The industrial complex originally consisted of thirty monumental silos, four kilometres of spiderweb-like underground tunnels, and a series of vast halls designed to house machinery. The eight remaining silos were cleared of cement and debris. The initial phase of the conversion lasted more than eighteen months, marking the beginning of a process that gradually revealed the factory's hidden beauty. The architect became the sculptor, and the factory his block of marble.
Different forms and figures gradually emerged, coupled with an extraordinary range of stylistic components. The factory revealed itself as a gem of architectural movements from the past: Surrealism in staircases leading nowhere and in elements suspended above the void; powerful spaces of unusual proportions; the Abstract purity of volumes, at times fractured and raw; and the Brutalist materiality of exposed concrete. The contradictions and ambiguities of the complex inherently pointed towards rebirth. Ricardo Bofill's undertaking was, in essence, a theoretical rethinking of the relationship between space and function. From a decaying industrial complex, the architect succeeded in sculpting a place where work and life unfold in a continuous virtuous continuum.
www.ricardobofill.com
Photography by Ricardo Bofill
Words by Monica Ady
Discover the full version of this story in Volume I.