1945-2022

Juan Luis Trillo de Leyva passed away in his home town of Seville on 25 November. He was an architect in that broad and humanistic sense of the word that today seems rare because it is scarce. His projects were characterized by an exquisite sensibility towards each context and by the use of geometry not as an imposition, but as a dialogue, as he reflected in this contained housing projects and above all in what can be considered his masterpiece, the delicate and silent conversion into municipal offices of the Augustinian convent of Jerez de la Frontera. No less noteworthy and sensitive was his devotion to writing, which would lead him to direct the excellent magazine Periferia for some time, but that always remained willingly focused on fundamental issues like continuity, the passage of time, and drawing and the word in architecture. But perhaps Trillo de Leyva’s most memorable facet was his academic one: as Chair Professor of Architectural Design at the School of Architecture of Seville he managed to surround himself with talent, and conveyed his humanist concerns and his passion for architecture to several generations of professors and students.