© Txema Salvans

The Barcelona everyone looks up to because of its exemplary talent for city-making is also the benchmark for housing. Against market fevers, what is considered a basic need has in the Catalonian capital found the protection of public policies whose effectivity is partly due to the know-how of its architects, who have managed to turn social habitation into a laboratory for innovation. Marta Peris and José Toral have contributed to this promising panorama through their two decades of experience, demonstrating that quality is not at odds with the affordable and that the field which others reduce to mere formulas is full of programmatic, spatial, and material potential.