Ricardo Bofill
Architect
Spanish architect whose firm designed over 1,000 projects in more than 50 countries. Known for his association with the Les Halles project.
He traveled the whole of Spain while he was still young. He designed his first project, a summer home in Ibiza, at the age of 17. He became a student at the Barcelona School of Architecture in 1957, but was later expelled for participating in a demonstration. He relocated to the Université de Beaux-Arts Genève, from which he would later graduate.
His firm designed parts of the Barcelona Airport and the W Barcelona Hotel.
He came from a successful Catalan bourgeois family of builders. His father, Ricardo, was a fiery political activist; his mother, Maria Levi, was of Italian Jewish descent.
He and Le Corbusier both became world-their architects.