A perfectly postmodern #TBT by the late Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill. As dramatic as it is awe-inspiring, the Les Espaces d’Abraxas, a vast housing estate in Noisy-le-Grand, France, was completed in 1983. It was intended as a bold alternative to the modernist social housing designs by Le Corbusier et al in the 1950s, which were all white walls and minimal detailing. Bofill also hoped that it would offer a more utopian mode of existence among those that lived there, although he conceded in later years that this was an impossible dream, owing in part to the isolating nature of the enormous structure.
