Architect Oriol Buhigas, best known as the master planner for the successful 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, was a fierce advocate of urban planning as a political and social act. He played a crucial role in the cultural and political life of his city, influencing generations of urban theorists and practitioners.
As leader of Barcelona’s urban planning department in the mid-1980s, Bohigas conceived and implemented the “Barcelona Model” that formed the urban backbone of the city’s Olympic Games. This event and its lasting legacy put the gray, exhausted but fiercely independent city, punished by decades of Francoism, on the international map. Twenty years later, the Barcelona model informed London’s approach to using the Olympic Games as an opportunity to create an integrated piece of the city with housing and amenities for the capital’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods.
With Franco’s death in 1975, Barcelona seized the opportunity of democratization and modernization. Working closely with the first socialist mayors of the post-Franco era, Narcisse Serra and Pascual Marajal, Buhigas created the intellectual and spatial engine for her transformation. Committed to innovating through continuity rather than rupture and aggressive restructuring, he recognized that the city’s public spaces—sidewalks, streets, squares, parks, beaches, and waterways—must be at the heart of a democratic vision of the contemporary city.
Bohigas built on the ecclesiastical work of the father of modern urbanism, Idelfonso Cerda, who in the mid-19th century laid out a plan for the growing city with an elegant and practical diagonal grid known as the Eixample. With its tree-lined avenues and pedestrian-friendly streets of the Rambla, generous public spaces and community parks, Cerda’s Grid has served the city well. Bohigas reinterpreted this 20th century paradigm, upgrading the public sphere, condensing local neighborhoods and reuniting the city with its waterfront on the Mediterranean.
“Amplify the periphery; turn on the center” Bohigas’s flailing motto was to revitalize Barcelona. This translated into a program of centralized interventions that gave dignity to disadvantaged neighborhoods – such as the working-class neighborhood of Poble Nou – and made dense inner city neighborhoods more convenient, with pocket parks, markets, play areas and local amenities.
In two decades, much has been achieved. In recognition of this collective effort, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) broke with tradition in 1999 and awarded the City of Barcelona – not an individual or group of architects – the Royal Gold Medal. Bohigas was one of five individuals identified in the citation.
Equally sharp in style of speech and dress—he spoke in short, choppy sentences shed with rough charisma and wore perfectly ironed shirts, linen jackets, and colorful socks—Bohigas had the air of a turn-of-the-century aesthetic but a pragmatic mind. He was outspoken, often quarrelsome, but always had a twinkle in his eye. Eager to get things done, he resigned his position as elected councillor in charge of culture in 1991 when he felt Maragall was too slow to implement one of his projects for neighborhood libraries.
Born in Barcelona, Aurelo was the son of middle-class Catalan intellectuals, Maria Guardiola and Pere Puhigas, a professor of linguistics. His high school friend Josep Martorell convinced him to enroll in 1943 at Barcelona’s school of architecture, ETSAB, which he would continue to lead as principal from 1977 to 1980.
In his thirties, he formed the pro-modern R group and had the audacity to write to architect Mies van der Rohe to propose the reconstruction of the simple and elegant Barcelona Pavilion, designed for the 1929 International Exposition and tearing up the next year. Fortunately, this plan was implemented in 1986 and the impressive modern pavilions of Montjuïc Park were reconstructed.
With Martorell and David Mackay, Bohigas created MBM Arquitectes, one of Spain’s most successful design practices, with a large portfolio of public and private buildings that adhered to the principles of low-level contextual Modernism. Their buildings prioritized the relationship with the city rather than the self-promotion of gymnastics. For example, their design for the 1992 Olympic Village is memorable because of the way the layout of the urban blocks opens towards the sea, reconnecting the old city to the water line.
Bohigas provided the critical intellectual and theoretical basis for the practice. He was a founding member of the publisher Edicions 62, editor of Arquitecturas Bis (1974-1985) and president of the Fundació Joan Miró (1981-1988). He published more than 15 books, including Barcelona Entre el Pla Cerdà i el Barraquisme (1963, Barcelona between the scheme of Cerda and the towns of Chanti). He argued strongly for the social responsibility of the architect. In a letter he addressed to a member of the Barcelona City Council Urban Planning Commission in 1964, he made his point: “To be an urban planner, you must begin to be a socialist now.”
Bohigas, along with Barcelona City Council Urban Projects Director, Josep Acebillo, were responsible for selecting some of the most talented final year students – the so-called “golden pencils” – from the ETSAB School of Architecture and giving them the responsibility to come with ideas for individual city districts. . He has also played a significant role in attracting international figures, from Arata Isozaki to Frank Gehry, to build in Barcelona and providing opportunities for locally trained young architects to make their mark on the urban landscape.
Bohigas believes that the cumulative effect of small “micro” projects – often referred to as urban “acupuncture” – can be more effective than complex, large-scale initiatives that took years to implement and required budgets that did not exist in early fragile Spain. democracy. This approach can be seen as a precursor to the current vogue of ‘tactical urbanism’, where improvements on a small scale – sidewalk expansion, outdoor seating, street closures, tree planting – are implemented quickly and on a temporary basis in close collaboration with local communities.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Bohigas was associated with the Gauche Divine, a group of left-wing bourgeois artists, filmmakers, philosophers, and artists who met regularly at Barcelona’s Boccaccio discotheque. Their spirit has shaped not only his career but also his social life. In the late 1970s, Bohigas and his partner, landscape architect Beth Galle, transformed their apartment in Plaza Real – in what was then a rundown area of the old city – into a salon for international cultural exchange and heated discussions of city politics.
Often accompanied by whiskey and cigars, Bohigas argued deep into the night with professionals and politicians of different generations and beliefs in one of the most beautiful squares in the heart of his beloved city.
Beth escaped. From his wife, Isabel Arnau, from whom he separated, and their five children, Josep, Gloria, Maria, Eulalia, and Bear, and nine grandchildren and a granddaughter.