TC CUADERNOS 171/172: Peris + Toral

Architecture 2014-2025

This double issue covers, in 390 pages, more than a decade of work by the Barcelona studio Peris + Toral, through a selection of projects that place collective housing at the center of the contemporary architectural debate.

The works presented in this issue originate from public competitions, a field in which Peris + Toral have developed a particularly consistent track record. The publication brings together their most significant works in the field of social housing and collective space, showing how regulations, far from being a limitation, become a design tool, and how technique can precede form to give rise to open, flexible and durable architecture. Intermediate spaces, bioclimatic atriums, honest construction systems and a materiality understood in terms of its performance define a body of work that is committed to long-term social, environmental and cultural sustainability.

The projects are presented through an extensive collection of plans, axonometric drawings and construction details, some of which have been specifically reworked for this edition, allowing the structural, spatial and material logic of each work to be followed with precision. The attention to detail, passive systems, the relationship between structure and space, and the economy of means is reinforced by three fold-outs that expand the reading of key projects.

The trajectory of Peris + Toral, founded in 2005 by Marta Peris and José Toral, has been widely recognised nationally and internationally, with awards that place their work among the most relevant in contemporary architecture. These include the RIBA International Award 2024, the DETAIL Prize 2024, the Erich Mendelsohn Preis 2023 and the CSCAE Spanish Architecture Award 2022, as well as being finalists for the Mies van der Rohe Award on several occasions. These awards reflect a rigorous and committed practice, in which research, construction quality and the social dimension of architecture are integrated in a coherent manner.