Oscar Tusquets Blanca
Dios lo ve
DIOS LO VE: A PORTRAIT OF OSCAR TUSQUETS
There are creators who cannot be explained through a single discipline, but rather through a way of being in the world. Oscar Tusquets, one of the founding figures behind BD, belongs to that increasingly rare lineage.
Architect by training, designer by adaptation, painter by vocation and writer by necessity, Tusquets has spent more than six decades moving across disciplines without ever accepting a hierarchy among them. Not as parallel practices, but as a single field of thought. What defines his work is not medium, scale or category, but an attitude: intellectual rigor, curiosity without specialization and a deep mistrust of dogma.
That is precisely what Dios lo ve sets out to capture. Produced by Hic&Nunc Filmworks, with the participation of RTVE, 3Cat, CaixaForum+ and Filmin, the documentary does not retrace a life or catalogue achievements. Instead, it proposes a portrait of Oscar Tusquets in the present tense.
“We were not interested in making an official or complacent portrait,” explains the director. “We wanted to observe, to listen, to accompany. To enter his universe, not to organize it.” The film does not follow a straight line because Tusquets himself does not. Instead, it unfolds as a collage in which personal life and creative work coexist without hierarchy.
Oscar: Attitude over signature
Following the release of Dios lo ve, Tusquets spoke with BD about the experience of seeing himself on screen. “I recognize myself completely,” he says. “The documentary is more about my person than about my work.” That distinction is key, because what defines Tusquets is not a stylistic signature, but a certain attitude that follows his life and work.
“I have an absolute incapacity for specialization,” he admits, describing a creative restlessness that has shaped his entire practice. When he is writing, he feels he should be painting; when painting, he thinks he should be writing. Architecture remains his formal training, but he designs, writes and paints as an architect, even if, as he dryly adds, architects tend to write very badly.
Freedom in complete honesty
That same creative restlessness that prevents Tusquets from settling into a single medium or discipline, or from holding a fixed position permanently, is also what leads some to interpret his words and gestures as rebellious or provocative. Tusquets does not entirely disagree. “People say I’m provocative or rebellious,” he says. “It’s not something I plan, but I do say things that can be provocative.” Defending the Sagrada Familia or even Benidorm may sound like provocation, but for him it is simply a refusal of automatic thinking, of settling comfortably into ready-made truths. Instead, he believes in saying what one believes without calculating the reaction. A position that is entirely free and, for some, inevitably perceived as provocative.
Value of ambiguity
This same resistance underpins his approach to architecture and design. Tusquets is deeply suspicious of direct messages and dogma. He favors ambiguity, designing with nuance in order to leave space for others to think. Pedagogy, he insists, is not the role of art, and absolute truths are not to be trusted. This mistrust of absolutes is not a retreat from responsibility, but a form of commitment. “Any profession that at some point requires lying does not interest me,” he states bluntly. His commitment lies elsewhere. “I search for beauty because I believe that behind beauty there is truth. That is my commitment.” Understood this way, beauty is not an aesthetic goal but an ethical position. A way of approaching the world without simplification. This idea runs throughout all his work regardless of scale or format. A private house and a metro station carry the same weight if they are lived in and enjoyed. What changes is not importance, but reach. “An artist wants their work to be enjoyed,” he says. The greater the number of people who experience it, the greater the satisfaction. It is precisely this attitude that Dios lo ve captures at its core. Rather than fixing a legacy or cataloguing works, the film observes a way of being in the world that is ironic, rigorous and deeply free. What it ultimately reveals is not only a character, but a way of working: one that resists hierarchy, mistrusts dogma, embraces humor and accepts risk as a creative condition rather than a slogan.
A way of being, shared: BD Barcelona
As the documentary suggests, this way of being did not remain individual. It took shape in the creation of BD Barcelona, when a group of like-minded architects and designers decided to produce their own ideas, assume real creative risks and treat design as a cultural practice rather than a purely commercial category.
From the beginning, BD was part of a broader conversation that was rigorous, rebelliously creative and deliberately free. In this sense, BD can be understood less as a brand than as a tangible consequence of an attitude and a way of being in the world. The material expression of a way of thinking that needed structure in order to exist.
