The Factory — Taller de Arquitectura

About this place

In 1973, Ricardo Bofill discovered an abandoned cement factory on the outskirts of Sant Just Desvern and immediately recognised its potential. Over the following decades, the industrial ruins were transformed into La Fábrica — his studio, home, and the most theatrical architectural workspace in the world. The complex retains the bones of the factory: vast cylindrical silos, concrete vaults, underground spaces, and industrial-scale machinery. What Bofill and his team added was an almost baroque layer of intervention — climbing plants let run for decades now engulf entire facades, eucalyptus trees grow from the factory floor, and the silos have been carved into a library, an exhibition space, a cathedral-like living room, and private apartments on upper levels. The effect is of a ruin inhabited rather than restored. Spaces shift between raw industrial concrete and refined interior finishes, between open courtyards overgrown with vegetation and enclosed vaulted chambers. The smell of damp concrete and eucalyptus is inseparable from the experience. The Factory is not a public museum. It functions as an active architecture studio and is opened selectively for events, exhibitions, and guided visits. When accessible, it offers a completely singular architectural experience — part ruin, part folly, part working creative institution, and entirely unlike anything else.