What can I say about La Muralla Roja ? Iconic. That’s it … it was a lifelong dream to go and see Ricardo Bofill’s masterpiece in Spain. I spent three days staying there, swimming in the glorious pool and taking photographs. Having just arrived from the medina of Tangier, that sense of unconcerned dislocation felt familiar to me. I was happy to wander up and down the stairs, turning a corner and finding myself in the blue area of the building or the deep red area, without ever trying too hard to orientate myself. I constantly found myself not quite where I was trying to get to, but it didn’t matter: within these walls the journey was definitely the destination.
The building’s appearance changed throughout the day, the effect of the shifting light on the colours and shapes of the building: the reds getting darker, the pinks brighter, the blues turning grey in the sunlight. The blues would bleed into the sky and often, the most startling colour was that of the Mediterranean or the cloudless sky glimpsed through the tall cut-outs that led the eye to the outside world.