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MADRID — Spanish architect and city planner Oriol Bohigas, who helped make his hometown of Barcelona one of the main tourist destinations in the Mediterranean, died at his home there on November 30. He was 95 years old.
His death was confirmed by his son, Josep Bohigas, who added that his father had had Parkinson’s disease for several years.
Working for the city government of Barcelona, Mr. Bohigas was one of the brains of the overhaul of the city in preparation for the 1992 Olympic Games, particularly the conversion of the seashore, which had become an abandoned industrial area.
In partnership with two other architects, Mr. Bohigas designed a new marina that will host the Olympic sailing competitions, as well as a public park and an athlete’s home village. Villa Olimpica. The city rehabilitated almost three miles of the seashore as beaches, and by the end of the Games the area had become a popular residential area.
Catalonia’s regional leader, Pere Aragonès, paid tribute on Twitter, calling Mr Bohigas “Barcelona’s great transformative”.
While the impact of the Summer Olympics on Barcelona became a model for London and other cities that later hosted the event, Mr. Bohigas and his associates used their success as a springboard to add buildings and help redesign other parts of Barcelona, including the running . the lower Raval quarter. Some of the landmark projects overhauled disused infrastructure, such as army barracks that became Barcelona’s new campus. Pompeu Fabra University opened in 2000.
Martha Thorne, dean of the IE School of Architecture and Design in Madrid, said via email that Mr. Bohigas was “fundamental not only in the transformation of Barcelona, but also in our understanding of cities.” “The ideas of urban acupuncture – small actions over time that can be understood as part of a whole, including new squares and small green spaces – have been embraced by residents and have had a positive impact on neighborhoods.”
While Mr. Bohigas remains focused on Barcelona, he also contributed to the other major international event held in Spain in 1992: Expo ’92 in Seville, where he and his partners built one of the pavilions. The mansion was abandoned decades later, but reopened this year. new house from regional archives
He and his partners have also undertaken projects in Germany, France and Italy, as well as in Latin America. These included an apartment block above it. Kochstrasse A hotel in Berlin, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and city planning for new neighborhoods in the cities of Aix-en-Provence in France and Salerno in Italy.
Oriol Bohigas Guardiola was born on December 20, 1925 in Barcelona. His father, Pere Bohigas, worked for the City of Barcelona and briefly ran the city’s theater school. His mother, María Guardiola, was a housewife.
Mr. Bohigas, in 1943, Gen. As Francisco Franco consolidated his dictatorship after winning the Spanish Civil War, he enrolled in Barcelona’s school of architecture. Mr. Bohigas was eventually appointed principal of the school of architecture in 1977, shortly after Franco’s death. He saw it as part of his life’s mission to free architecture and urban planning from the conservative rigidity of the Franco dictatorship and return Barcelona to innovative thinking associated with the main cultural movements that reshaped the city in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
“I remember,” he recalled meeting In 2010, “I spent all my architectural education, which I finished in 51, listening only to those who talk about classical architecture and those who advocate extreme conservatism in all aspects. We learned nothing about contemporary architecture. Yes, I believe my generation is a generation that strives to regain the modernity that was lost in the first phase of Franco.”
In 1951, Mr. Bohigas teamed up with two other architects, Josep Martorell and David Mackay, to form a firm named after their initials: MBM. The firm was founded in 1974 as a award-winning project To build a school called Thau, without classrooms and with as few walls as possible.
His last major project was the building of Barcelona. Design Museum, opened in 2014. But like an earlier MBM project to expand Spanish retailer El Corte Ingles’ flagship Barcelona store, the design museum didn’t please everyone. an article The New York Times described the building as “a squat, zinc-plated structure with consoles front and rear” and noted that it “is not exactly celebrated for its exterior form,” adding that “some have called it a ‘mean. Staple’.”
Mr Bohigas was proud to have never joined a political party, but embraced left-wing ideas and held different positions in the Barcelona city government, city planning in the 1980s and as official in charge of the Barcelona ministry of culture in the early 1990s. , when the city hosts the Olympics. He also supported the separatist movement that started gaining momentum in Catalonia ten years ago.
His involvement in Barcelona’s cultural life went far beyond the City Hall. He was the founder of Edicions 62 publishing houses. He was president of the publishing house in the 1980s. Foundation Joan MiroHe has a museum in Barcelona, which was created by the painter named after him, where his works are exhibited. In 2011, Mr. Bohigas stepped down as chairman of Ateneo Barcelonés, one of the city’s most influential cultural associations, eight years later.
In addition to his son Josep, Mr. Bohigas is survived by his estranged wife, Isabel Arnau; four other children from their marriage, Gloria, María, Eulalia and Pere; nine grandchildren; a great-grandchild; and her friend Beth Gali.
In recent years, Mr Bohigas has criticized many aspects of Barcelona’s development, including the widening of the city’s Broadway-style street known as Diagonal Mar. He also lamented the rise of real estate speculation in Barcelona and advocated the right of slums to live in abandoned buildings.
“It’s on,” he said. said in 2010As Spain plunges into a banking crisis triggered by bad real estate loans, “a society with so many empty houses and so many people without homes is a sick society facing a problem in sharing public and private assets. ”
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