Inauguration of Casa Bloc

Josep Torres i Clavé (Barcelona, ​​Spain, 1906 - Els Omellons, Spain, 1939), was a Spanish architect and designer. He was the nephew of the architect Jaume Torres i Grau. He began his professional career with the architects Josep Lluís Sert and Antoni Bonet, with whom he founded MIDVA (Mobles i decoració per a la Vivienda actual). In 1924, he began studying architecture at the School of Barcelona. In 1927-28, at the age of 21, he made a study trip to Italy, together with Josep Lluís Sert, where he learned about the works of the great classics. Le Corbusier's passage through Barcelona on his way to Madrid and the Can Dalmau exhibition were determining factors in his formation as a modern architect. He finished his studies on August 26, 1929.

After finishing his studies, he will be one of the founding members of GATEPAC (Group of Spanish Artists and Technicians for the Progress of Contemporary Architecture) —a group created as the Spanish branch of the International Congress of Modern Architecture, CIAM—, founded in Zaragoza in 1930 by initiative of Fernando García Mercadal to promote the rationalist style in Spanish architecture, with three sections (central group (Madrid group), north (Basque) and eastern (Catalan) where he used the denomination of GATCPAC, Grup d'Arquitectes i Tècnics Catalans pel Progress of Contemporary Architecture). In this association that spread the principles of the modern movement, Torres Clavé was considered one of the best cartoonists.

Parallel to their constitution as a group, they opened a place on Passeig de Gràcia for exhibitions and promoted the magazine AC (1931-1937), Documents of Contemporary Activity, where they carried out an important task of dissemination and criticism, becoming the soul of the publication; It presented the work of architects and artists such as Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Erich Mendelsohn, Van Doesburg, Neutra, Lubetkin, Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso. He was also director of the Superior Technical School of Architecture of Barcelona during the years 1936 to 1939.

On July 30, 1936, he created the Sindicat d'Arquitectes de Catalunya (S.A.C), of which he was general secretary, and with which he would actively participate in reconstruction works, new schools and redevelopment. He was an active member of the PSUC.

Among his most important works are the Casa Bloc (1932-1936, Paseo de Torres i Bages 91-105, in Sant Andreu), and the Tuberculosis Dispensary (1934-1938, at number 10 of the San Bernat passage), both in Barcelona and made together with Josep Lluís Sert and Joan Baptista Subirana. In the field of urban planning, he actively participated in the "future Barcelona urbanization project" of 1932 (subsequently baptized as the Macià Plan), presented by Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Mercadal, Sert, among others, as well as the Ciutat de Repós i Vacances de Castelldefels (1932). Within his designs, there are proposals for furniture that are still reproduced today, such as the chair with a rattan back that became famous or a floor lamp, pieces designed for his family circle.

He died on the front in the town of Omellons, near Borges Blanques, in 1939 during the Spanish Civil War while building trenches on the Lerida front.