For Sebastian Weiss, it’s not the popularity of a building or the architect’s name that lures him in. ‘It could also be a completely trivial building, like a supermarket or parking garage that has a charisma.’ In November 2019, spurred on by the release of ‘Ricardo Bofill: Visions of Architecture’, Weiss visited one of the architect's most notable feats, ‘La Muralla Roja’ designed in 1968 and located in Calp, Spain.
Lodging in the fully-functioning apartment complex for a week, he documented the strict, alternating geometry, surreal colour schemes and sci-fi-esque shadow plays. Here, Weiss offers a window into the otherworldly realm of ‘The Red Wall’. As a tribute to the legendary Spanish architect, who passed away on 14 January 2022, we revisit Weiss’ experience of creating the iconic series.
Sebastian Weiss on photographing Ricardo Bofill’s La Muralla Roja
The sun was already low in the sky, casting the entire series in a warm autumnal tone. Long shadows intensified the impression of the strict architecture and add more plasticity to the images
The photographic encounter with a building feels to me like a meeting with a strange or unknown person, there is curiosity and tension, but also respect and restraint
This architectural utopia was really a major event for me as a photographer because it is such an absurdly beautiful and surreal location, which appears sometimes like a film set or a staging
INFORMATION
-
Best of Design Miami Paris 2025: animal sculptures and musical ping-pong tablesDesign Miami Paris returns to the Hôtel de Maisons (until 26 October 2025): here are the Wallpaper* highlights
-
Sam Falls is inspired by nature’s unpredictability in living works for RuinartThe artist creates works that are in-between photography and painting as part of Ruinart's Conversations with Nature series
-
Michael Graves’ house in Princeton is the postmodernist gem you didn’t know you could visitThe Michael Graves house – the American postmodernist architect’s own New Jersey home – is possible to visit, but little known; we take a tour and explore its legacy
-
Cindy Sherman in Menorca: ‘She's decades ahead of social media and the construction of identity for the camera’‘Cindy Sherman: The Women’, its title a nod to an image-conscious 1930s Broadway hit, takes the American artist's carefully constructed, highly performative works to Hauser & Wirth Menorca
-
What is recycling good for, asks Mika Rottenberg at Hauser & Wirth MenorcaUS-based artist Mika Rottenberg rethinks the possibilities of rubbish in a colourful exhibition, spanning films, drawings and eerily anthropomorphic lamps
-
The largest posthumous survey of Helen Frankenthaler puts her in the frame with Pollock and RothkoGuggenheim Bilbao hosts 'Painting Without Rules', a major exhibition of soak-stain innovator Helen Frankenthaler’s paintings that also includes Pollock and Rothko
-
This rainbow-coloured flower show was inspired by Luis Barragán's architectureModernism shows off its flowery side at the New York Botanical Garden's annual orchid show.
-
Mona Kuhn’s love affair with Rudolph Schindler’s modernist LA home‘The Schindler House: A Love Affair’ features artist Mona Kuhn’s surreal-inspired silver prints evoking an impossible love
-
Suburbia: American dream or residential nightmare, asks multidisciplinary show‘Suburbia. Building the American Dream’ digs deep into the archetypes, rise and realities of suburban living, at Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona
-
Ibiza is the new hotspot for contemporary artGathering Ibiza opens, a Balearic outpost of the London gallery, as founder Alex Flick hails the island’s emerging contemporary art scene
-
Helmut Newton’s life and work to be celebrated in a major exhibition in A Coruña, Spain‘Helmut Newton - Fact & Fiction’, created with the Helmut Newton Foundation, will open at the Marta Ortega Pérez (MOP) Foundation in November 2023
