Sant Just Desvern's 2 Brutalist buildings are both by Ricardo Bofill, making this Barcelona suburb a concentrated study of one architect's Brutalist vision. La Fàbrica — Bofill's own studio and residence — is a converted cement factory where silos, machine rooms, and industrial chimneys have been transformed into living and working spaces. Vegetation grows over raw concrete surfaces in a controlled ruin aesthetic.
Walden 7, built nearby in 1975, stacks 446 apartments around a series of interconnected interior courtyards that rise the full height of the building. The structure's interlocking units, sky-lit voids, and rooftop pool create a vertical community that pushes Brutalist social housing toward utopian ambition. Together, La Fàbrica and Walden 7 represent Bofill's most radical period — architecture that imagines entirely new ways of living and working.
