Barcelona Study Tour - October 2025: ‘Rationalism Beyond the Ramblas’

Ricardo Bofill and Ana Bofill Levy’s ‘Walden 7’ apartment building is a good example. At 14 storeys high and containing 430 modular flats, it was originally intended to be built as a cluster of several substantial blocks, so as a solo block it presents a somewhat idiosyncratic structure in the suburban landscape. It is one of those buildings which you have to give time to, to experience the cathedral like, soaring and hushed internal common spaces, the quirky, brick red, sculptural treatment of the fenestration, balconies and entrances which taken together achieve both privacy and a strong sense of community. Not to mention the claustrophobic and unnecessarily small lifts reaching the pristine swimming pool on the roof and views back towards the city.

This was a marvellous ultra marathon of an architectural tour. Very probably everyone had visited Barcelona, very probably more than once, but this took us on a deep and wide new journey. We convened early each morning and parted company late every evening. We walked many, many miles but somehow never really tired, ate and drank every meal together and visited intensely or walked past ,pausing each time for a fact check and description, countless buildings of note. Time became strangely elastic so that each day seemed stretched beyond normal length - in an entirely good way - by doing, seeing, walking and talking so much and so happily.

Other highlights from our 3 days included: the reknowned La Fabrica, Boffil’s office occupying the spectacular conversion of an enormous silo; Modulus Matrix social housing 2022 Peris and Toral, winner of RIBA International Prize; Josep Lluis Sert’s TB clinic, now appropriately serving as a GP surgery but in need of renovation; a visit to the Enric Miralles Foundation (a real privilege); Miralles’ Santa Catarina market and housing for the elderly; the Spanish Republic building 1937, reminding us all how the memory of the civil war continues to cast a very long shadow; Sert’s visionary and wonderful Casa Bloc: an early social housing complex of 1932-39 with a museum piece original apartment; a Richard Rogers out of town multistorey hotel, brilliantly conceived but now less than comfortably inhabited by a somewhat misfitting hotel chain; Canodromo Meridian – a disused greyhound stadium now perversely floating in a new urban park; The Park Hotel a 1950’s neo-Rationalist gem; and of course Mies van der Rohe and Lily Reich’s ‘Barcelona’ pavilion, more correctly known as the Germany pavilion, built for 1929 Expo, which never gets old. We ended our tour, after a climb to Montjuic, with a fabulous lunch on a long table overlooking the sculpture garden at Fundació Joan Miro, the beautiful gallery designed by Josep Lluis Sert in 1974 to house Miro’s work.

Someone asked if we would be stopping at the Sagrada Familia - it turned out we would not, although a few made an unscheduled brief visit, quickly brought down to earth by crowds and trinket sellers and reflecting on the experiential harm when an important building makes it onto the tourist trail list.

Lacing this all together were numerous pauses en route and on foot to observe the theory and practice behind the city’s rigorous chamfered grid layout, and strolling down boulevards passing significant art nouveau apartment blocks, office, retail, university and hotel buildings of various eras and quirky urban sculptures, all picked out and brought alive by Jonathan with detailed facts and insights.

We could not have wished for a better guide in Jonathan, from his copious and illustrated ‘programme notes’ serving both as homework and as a daily guide, his brilliant planning so that every day had a different character and emphasis, and every meal together perfectly timed and located, all delivered with a wry sense of humour and deep instinctive knowledge of his subject. We all parted company feeling very content indeed and strongly encouraging Jonathan to plan the next one.