PERIS+TORAL: Grid and Invention
A Conversation with Marta Peris and José Toral
Eduardo Prieto
Text published n El Croquis 234 PERIS+TORAL 2015 2026.
ORDER MANIFESTS ITSELF in many ways. It may arise spontaneously, like the crystalline structures bestowed by nature, or like that seemingly effortless order that appears to be the prerogative of geniuses. More often, however, order is the outcome of effort — the deliberate will to resist that childlike complacency in chaos that so frequently characterises our societies. The work of Marta Peris and José Toral constitutes a vast reservoir of vocation and labour, of carefully premeditated order, yet it combines — alongside the rigour and clarity expected of accomplished architecture — a poetic sensitivity and geometric talent found only in the very best.
It is difficult to determine where such a rare conjunction originates. Perhaps it stems from the distinct, almost opposing, temperaments of this Barcelona-based duo. If Toral — who speaks with clarity and composure, and who as a child aspired to be a magician and later, as a teenager, a mathematician before ultimately embracing architecture — may be associated with the rational and geometric force that permeates the studio's work; then Peris — who always wished to become an architect and expresses herself with a certain timidity, though with admirable precision — is likely responsible for the more lyrical dimension of their practice. However, this classification may be little more than the incidental product of the critic's imagination — inclined to cast characters in clear-cut roles — and of readers, who tend to favour simple stories with a moral. In reality, beyond the differing tones of voice and the variety of gestures and attitudes, what emerges from a long conversation with both architects is quite the opposite: a marked harmony in their thinking, a deep and almost natural alignment that can only come from having worked together for many years in approaching the projects of architecture — and of life.
This harmony is rooted, above all, in the alma mater they share: the Barcelona School of Architecture. The memory of those formative years is perhaps more vivid for Peris, who still recognises in the School the contextual outlook that defines it. She recalls with affection the classes of Albert Viaplana, Enric Miralles and Pedro Azara, and acknowledges the early influence of Esteve Bonell, who instilled in her the vocation of becoming an architect committed to reality, followed by that of Carles Martí, who nurtured her intellectual curiosity while supervising her doctoral thesis on Yasujirō Ozu. Toral adds Eduard Bru to this list of admired professors — the one who made him realise that the project stands above the author, and must therefore be carefully listened to and respected.
After graduating, Peris worked with Fernando Marzá, with whom she cultivated her already keen interest in architectural culture — and in culture more broadly — while Toral spent a year in Rafael Moneo's studio, where he learned that there are many ways to be an architect. Toral recalls that, in his search for 'the solution', Moneo tended to close doors rather than open them, practising a form of negative definition that turned the project into an exacting exercise in critique. "When we finally reached a sparse 'Not bad', we knew we were close to what he was looking for, which was to avoid well-trodden paths and then weave together the tentative traces of the project into a marvellous narrative". Moneo's example — his radical way of exercising the ethics of discernment — was not an undue burden for Toral, but rather the seed of a revelation. It made him realise that he could draw architectural value from his mathematical talent by applying analytical thinking to forms, patterns and structures.
Later, once working together as PERIS+TORAL, their shared admiration for the radical essentiality of Kazuyo Sejima and for the interplay between form and energy in the work of Lacaton & Vassal was complemented by a powerful set of intellectual influences. From John Berger, they took the connection to the land and to art rooted at ground level; from Victor Olgyay and Jean Prouvé, the bioclimatic and industrial dimensions of architecture; from Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gaston Bachelard, the attachment to the body and the ambition to bring a poetic quality to everyday life — both in the intimate space of the home and in the open public spaces of the city. All of this explains —while never fully accounting for— the architecture of PERIS+TORAL: a combination of analytical discernment, a passion for order, a systematic vocation, a commitment to the intimate and the everyday, environmental sensitivity, continuous engagement with materials and with makers, and professional rigour — always work, and always rigour.
Let us leave until the end the statement with which we might well have begun: Marta Peris and José Toral are the authors of some of the most daring, convincing and poetic collective housing projects built over the past three decades. For this reason, the purpose of this interview can only be to explore, with calmness and curiosity, the admirable body of work they have produced.
SYSTEMS OF EXCEPTION
Eduardo Prieto (EP): Architects work from that reservoir of assimilated knowledge, from that implicit way of seeing things that we refer to as intuition. Some intuitions are poetic, others structural or material, and some even relate to certain literary presences. In your case, I would say that intuition is less predictable, in the sense that geometry merges with imagination in its own way. I mean the intuition of the grid, of the system.
José Toral (JT): It is true that we start from certain images and patterns associated with a system. But we do not understand systems as rigid responses; but rather through the lens of exception. We believe that the system cannot be something imposed on a place. In this, we remain faithful to the tradition of the Barcelona School, which is fundamentally contextual. For us, the site is always the starting point — the place that establishes a set of boundary conditions. The topography, the irregular plot, particular orientations: all of these make any attempt at systematisation more difficult. Yet we do not regard this difficulty as something negative; quite the opposite. We see it as an opportunity to arrive at the solution the project itself demands. We do not devise a system and then adjust the exception to fit it. Instead, we begin with the exception and, from there, try to construct a system — a rule. This has been the case from our earliest projects to the most recent ones: in all of them, the housing system is not a fixed entity given once and for all, but an adaptive framework that gains meaning precisely because it must accommodate exceptions.
EP: Approaching the system from the standpoint of exception has some remarkable precedents. One that comes to mind is the Basilica in Vicenza, which Palladio renders in his treatise as a perfect, almost Platonic figure. Yet when seen in its actual setting, it reveals itself as an artefact that conveys a deep sense of order — a system — despite being conceived from exceptions: the asymmetry of the pre-existing building, the irregular points of access, the marked differences in level between its façades, and the fact that one of them is a party wall.
JT: Yes. In this respect we are less aligned with Mies — the tyranny of precision — and closer to Palladio or to Kahn, who resolve irregularities and exceptions through systems that adjust themselves with great subtlety: in Palladio's case, through the spacing of the serliana columns; in Kahn's, through the panelling layout. This assimilated imprecision interests us far more than the simple perfection of the grid. And although at first glance our buildings might appear to be perfect grids, they are, in fact, constructed out of exceptions. In the housing project in Cornellà, for example, the corner module changes in order to position the windows properly. The grid is ultimately enhanced by its imperfection, which, in our view, is what makes it more interesting.
EP: In other words: you start out as Platonists and end up as Aristotelians.
Marta Peris (MP): The idea is that the system must be conceived in such a way that, when it is pushed to its limits in the face of irregularities, it can still respond appropriately — that it can become something else without ceasing to be a system. These initial patterns may indeed be Platonic at the outset, but they become Aristotelian insofar as we introduce degrees of freedom into them — half-modules, for example — which allow the exception to be absorbed creatively. Systems begin as abstractions, but sooner or later they must become objects and respond to the specific conditions of their context. Without these degrees of freedom programmed into the grid from the outset, systems, geometric patterns, would become tyrannical. It would simply amount to a dictatorship of geometry.
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