Ricardo Bofill’s Muralla Roja is now on Airbnb

The new Airbnb Design category now has more than 7,000 residences among the most beautiful architectural projects in the world. From October 3, World Architecture Day, the Muralla Roja – designed by Ricardo Bofill in Calpe, in the province of Alicante, Spain – was added to these.

The building, among the first created by Bofill’s atelier, was finished in 1973, at the height of the post-modernism birth, and although it is more than forty years old it is still fresh, thanks to the bold use of color and a complex typology, which incorporates the Arab elements of the traditional architecture of the area and at the same time the rules of classical composition. The project was also influenced by the constructivism of the early Twentieth century and the structuralism of the Fifties.

The complex, which contains 50 apartments, is developed starting from a Greek cross plant that extends alternating living spaces and common areas, developing vertically in dialogue with the nearby cliffs; while the iconic and labyrinthine system of stairs, bridges, and walkways – almost reminiscent of a painting by Maurits Cornelis Escher, but in color – recalls the Mediterranean vernacular architecture.