Ricardo Bofill : Les Années Françaises - The French Years

Renowned in Europe as an avant-garde designer from the 1970s onwards, the Catalan architect Ricardo Bofill (1939-2022) was called to the French stage following the destruction of Les Halles de Baltard, in the centre of the capital, in 1971. Invited to compete in 1974, the architect proposed a revival of the historic forms of Parisian urban planning. At the heart of a political rivalry, he was eliminated in October 1978. Bofill and his Taller de Arquitectura nevertheless played a leading role in the development of new towns in France from 1972 to 1985, with projects that were as striking as they were controversial: Abraxas in Marne-la-Vallée, Le Lac in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, and the Antigone district in the centre of Montpellier.

A veritable diary, organised chronologically and lavishly illustrated, this book describes the close relationship between architecture and politics under the presidencies of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and François Mitterrand, and provides a previously unpublished dossier on Les Halles, an emblematic project covered by a confidentiality clause until the architect's death in 2022. Through the Taller's archives and the accounts of witnesses from the time, including Jack Lang, Jean-Jacques Aillagon, Paul Chemetov, Roland Castro, Michèle Champenois and Antoine Grumbach, it describes Bofill's prodigious rise in France from 1968 to 1999, as well as the importance of architecture, then at the centre of public debate.