Thermodynamic Architectures: Climate, Material and Collective Housing

The seminar presents how architecture can respond simultaneously to the climate emergency and the housing crisis. Within the current environmental context, architecture can no longer rely solely on technological systems; it must recover fundamental relationships between climate, space, material, and ways of inhabiting.
The lecture proposes an architectural approach grounded in thermodynamic principles and in construction systems with low embodied carbon. In this framework, architecture is understood as an environmental infrastructure capable of producing comfort through spatial organization, material thermal inertia, and the intelligent management of air, light, and energy flows. Research into thermodynamics therefore becomes a key tool for rethinking housing performance, allowing buildings to regulate temperature, humidity, and ventilation through passive strategies rather than mechanical systems.
A second line of investigation focuses on materials with low embodied footprint, particularly earth-based construction systems. Their experience in earth construction demonstrates how contemporary architecture can integrate structural earth solutions capable of providing thermal inertia, hygroscopic regulation, while significantly reducing the environmental impact of construction.
Within this framework, the lecture presents three complementary design strategies developed in recent projects: “spacing” buildings through thermodynamic spaces such as atriums and courtyards that work as solar collectors in winter and ventilation chimneys in summer; “reducing” material consumption through sufficiency principles and the logic of the three R’s in order to minimise embodied energy; and “sharing” space through collective infrastructures that strengthen social interaction and the efficient use of resources.
Through a selection of recent projects, the seminar shows how these strategies can be translated into built architecture, demonstrating that environmental responsibility, social equity, and architectural quality can operate simultaneously within new models of collective housing. At the same time, these strategies outline a coherent framework that connects teaching, research, and professional practice, suggesting shared directions from which architectural education, investigation, and practice can evolve together.

JOSE TORAL – PERIS TORAL ARQUITECTES 
José Toral is an architect and founding partner, together with Marta Peris, of PERIS+TORAL ARQUITECTES, a Barcelona-based architecture practice. Their work addresses contemporary challenges related to housing, collective living and the climate emergency, often combining material experimentation with new domestic typologies.
Toral is an Associate Professor at ETSAB Barcelona, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya UPC, where he has taught since 2015. He has also taught at UIC Barcelona (2010), IED Barcelona (2014–2018) and ETSALS (2023–2024). Internationally, together with Marta Peris, he was invited to teach within the Milano International Design Studio at POLIMI in 2023. Since 2024, Marta Peris and José Toral have been invited as Visiting Professors at EPFL Lausanne.
Projects by PERIS+TORAL ARQUITECTES have been exhibited internationally, including the monographic exhibition Peris+Toral Wohnungsbau at Kunstverein Bielefeld, the Duos program at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine in Paris, and collective exhibitions such as the Venice Architecture Biennale (2016, 2025).
The work of the office has received numerous recognitions. Internationally, they have been awarded the RIBA International Award (2024), the DETAIL Prize (2024) and the Erich Mendelsohn Prize (2023), and have been shortlisted three times for the EU Mies Award, as well as finalists in 2022.