José Toral and Marta Peris

The Department of Architecture welcomes José Toral for his lecture, "ROOMS: Ways of Living, Ways of Building." ROOMS presents the work of Peris+Toral Arquitectes through a series of collective housing projects in which the room becomes the basic unit for rethinking domestic life. Rather than assigning each space a fixed function, equal-sized and interconnected rooms provide open frameworks capable of accommodating different forms of inhabitation over time.

The lecture explores how these adaptable domestic structures extend into intermediate and collective spaces, while low-impact construction systems, locally sourced materials and passive environmental strategies respond to the housing and climate emergencies. Through projects built in timber, earth and mineral materials, Peris+Toral approach architecture as social and climate infrastructure: a support for change, comfort and interdependent forms of living.

PERIS+TORAL ARQUITECTES is a Barcelona-based architecture studio founded in 2005 by Marta Peris and José Toral. The practice researches new forms of inhabitation in relation to new ways of building, addressing the housing and climate emergencies through adaptable domestic structures, intermediate spaces, low-impact construction systems and environmental comfort.

Marta Peris holds a PhD in architecture and is a lecturer at the Barcelona School of Architecture (ETSAB-UPC), where José Toral is an associate professor in the Department of Architectural Design. Both have taught at the Politecnico di Milano and, since 2024, have been guest professors at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).

Their work has received international recognition, including the RIBA International Prize 2024, the DETAIL Award 2024 and the Spanish Architecture Award CSCAE 2022. The practice has been the subject of monographic issues of Arquitectura Viva 263, TC Cuadernos 171-172 and El Croquis 234. Their work has been exhibited internationally, including two contributions to the Spanish Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale: Unfinished in 2016 and Internalities in 2025.

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