Josep Torres Clavé

Josep Torres i Clavé (Barcelona, 1906 - Els Omellons, 1939) was a Spanish architect and designer, founder along with other architects such as Josep Lluís Sert, Antoni Bonet Castellana or Germán Rodríguez Arias of the GATCPAC (Group of Catalan Artists and Technicians for Progress of Contemporary Architecture), an association that spread the rationalist principles of the European modern movement, welcoming the ideas and postulates of artists such as Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius or Mies Van der Rohe.

His most important works include the Casa Bloc (1932-1936) and the Tuberculosis Dispensary (1934-1938), both in Barcelona and carried out together with Josep Lluís Sert and Joan Baptista Subirana. As an urban planner, together with other members of GATCPAC and the Swiss architect Le Corbusier, he planned the Macià Plan (1932) and the Ciutat de Repós i Vacances de Castelldefels (1932).

His work as a designer, although limited, is characteristic of his rationalist tendencies and includes the famous Torres Clavé armchair present in the courtyard-auditorium of the pavilion of the Republic of Paris in 1937, a work of Josep Lluís Sert, and a floor lamp, both pieces designed for his family circle.

He died in 1939 during the Spanish Civil War on the Ebro Front, having been a key figure in the transformations that took place in the field of architecture during the 1930s.