RITA DI SANTO draws attention to a new film that features Ken Loach and Jeremy Corbyn, and their personal experience of media misrepresentation
Latest editorial
The man who coloured architecture
By his own admission, RICARDO BOFILL LEVI was a ‘nomad’ of the profession but his Marxist convictions helped him become an unprecedented innovator of social housing design
EMBRACING: (L to R) Inner yard in Muralla Roja/Red Wall; Ricardo Bofill Levi; the facade of Walden 7 and Muralla Roja forecourt
[(L to R) erichology/flickr/Creative Commons David Olivari/flickr/CC Nicolás Boullosa/flickr/CC Joanbanjo/Creative Commons]
JULIA TOPPIN recommends Patti Smith’s eloquent memoir that wrestles with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime
MARJORIE MAYO welcomes an account of family life after Oscar Wilde, a cathartic exercise, written by his grandson
KEN COCKBURN guides us through a survey of Chekov’s early short fiction, and the groundwork it laid for his later masterpieces
ANDY HEDGECOCK revels in a hugely enjoyable but deadly serious examination of the 1930s, that is an indictment of our own era
The bard distills our hellish times into fiery words
RICARDO BOFILL LEVI, the Catalan architect whose studio retained a poet and a philosopher, has died on January 14 aged 82.
A Marxist activist during the Franco dictatorship, he was expelled from university in Barcelona, fled Spain for Geneva and only returned in the mid-60s when he assembled like-minded architects to set up Taller de Arquitectura/Architecture Workshop and located it in a converted cement factory in Barcelona. They were uniquely focused on providing housing solutions.
Bofill’s is a socially aware architecture that addresses the complex problems of urban communal living with rare courage and design flair. The projects were invariably characterised by a flamboyance of form never seen before.
Similar stories
As unions sound the alarm on kafala-like dependence, FC Barcelona must decide whether their values extend beyond the pitch, writes KIVANC ELIACIK
SYLVIA HIKINS casts an eye across the contemporary art brought to a city founded on colonialism and empire
LYNNE WALSH previews the Bristol Radical History Conference this weekend