(1941-2002)

María Pérez Sheriff belonged to the same generation of Spanish architects that Ricardo Aroca or Manuel de las Casas. Upon return from her urbanism studies in the United States, that she carried out thanks to a Fullbright scholarship, she began her career in hospital planning at the Department of Health in the sixties. Her personal relationship with European experts in hospital design turned her into the pioneer of this field in Spain. Her knowledge of the European sanitary avant-garde, of the British National Health Service or the Nordic hospitals allowed her to counsel the Instituto Nacional de Previsión, which developed the systematic plans for the construction of hospitals. Together with her partner J. Calviño, she designed hospitals such as that of Costa del Sol or that of Talavera, with the collaboration of one of the most notorious figures of the time, the NHS architect Tatton-Brown. A regular attendee at the WHO conferences, Pérez Sheriff was a also a representative at the Spanish Council of Architectural Associations. An unexpected illness led her, this time as a patient, to a hospital that would become her last home.