In June, Barcelona became the center of the architecture world. The city hosted the UIA World Congress of Architects 2026: five days of talks, exhibitions, and thousands of architects from around the world, gathered around one theme, architecture for a planet in transition.
The UNCOMMON team went for a slightly different reason than most people there. We work on the business side of architecture, the part that rarely makes it onto a conference stage, which is how firms find the right clients, how they describe what they do, and how they actually grow. So we brought a camera and sat down with a few founders whose work we admire to talk about exactly that.
One of the best of those conversations was with Sergi Sauras, co-founder of PERF, a Barcelona studio that has grown to a team of fifteen and won international clients in under three years. What follows is that conversation, lightly edited for reading, with the full video below.
Who PERF is
Sergi founded PERF in Barcelona with his partners Gonzalo Auger, Miquel Benedito, and Carlos Cardona a little under three years ago. The studio is now fifteen people, working across a wide range of scales: mostly residential projects along the Catalan coast and in the Balearic Islands, a house about to start construction in Sweden, and, more recently, multifamily housing at a larger scale.
“We’re a young office, up and coming here in Barcelona,” is how Sergi puts it. The range of work, and the size of the team, is unusual for a practice that has existed for such a short time. You can see more of PERF’s work on their website and on Instagram.
How PERF won its first clients
Like most young practices, PERF started close to home. Sergi and his partners had worked together at large, internationally known studios, where they saw how those offices operate, not only at an architectural level, but at a business and client level too. When they went out on their own, the first work came from their own circle.
“As a young practice, you first rely on what we would call friends and family, or connections made along the years,” Sergi says. “You start working for a closer circle. There’s an interesting dynamic in how to push forward ideas together with people that are trusting you before you have your first body of built work available.”
Those one-to-one relationships turned into word of mouth, and word of mouth brought a second round of clients, friends of friends. The engine behind it was simple and demanding: “trying to over-deliver and work very hard to fulfill the ambitious designs that we come up with.” Almost three years in, referrals are still their main channel.
What makes PERF different
We asked Sergi what PERF offers that the large practices he came from do not. His answer started with a word many architects avoid.
“I know architects may be reluctant to use these terms, but we’re unafraid to say that we have a value proposition,” he says. For PERF, that proposition begins by questioning what the client brings to the table. “You can only ask for what you know, or what your references are.” So they interview the client, get to know the underlying ambitions, look for patterns, and then present new ways of approaching the brief that are different from what the client came asking for.
His example: a client wants a house that tells the story of the passing of time, and likes materials that age. “Does that mean a rustic house, or does it mean looking at what materials age with dignity, and then using those materials in an unexpected way?” The aim is the moment a client says they would never have thought of something, and that it is exactly what they had in mind.
PERF’s work is rooted in a traditional way of building and thinking about space, but, as Sergi says, “without nostalgia.” He also wants to bring back something he feels the profession lost over the last few decades: “this dash of divertimento, fun, joie de vivre,” where beauty and the poetry of architecture stopped being treated as an excess.
A big part of how they do this is by keeping the client close. PERF produces a lot of imagery and ultra-detailed 3D models, and rather than keep them internal, they share them with clients almost in real time. Sergi calls it bringing the client “right into the kitchen.” The constant feedback loop is, in his words, where the recommendations to friends of friends come from.
PERF’s ideal client
With so many project types, we wanted to know who PERF really wants to work with. Sergi’s answer had nothing to do with budget or scale.
“The ideal one would be someone that comes with some ideas on what he wants, but is also open to explore alternative paths,” he says. “A client that wants to experience the process of architecture as much as the final result.” It comes down to attitude toward the process, not wealth.
He was also honest about money, which matters more than the “attitude, not budget” line suggests on its own. PERF has worked at both the high and low end, and when the ambition and the budget do not match, they say so early. “We’re very transparent. We even recommend colleagues that could help the person.” When there is a match, it is not because the budget is large.
Sometimes a client simply says what they have and asks for a quick study of the possibilities, and if the result is exciting, PERF takes on the low-budget project anyway.
What Sergi took from the congress
The congress theme ran through the practical challenges Sergi is thinking about. The one he named was regulation.
He pointed to a lecture by Arno Brandlhuber on using regulation not as something to fight against, but as one more design tool. “That was very inspiring to us,” he says, “because there are challenges we’re facing in some municipalities, and how to give the best project possible to the city and the people who will live in those buildings, while answering to more and more restrictive regulations.”
It is a live problem for the studio, especially in Spain, and the session gave him a way to see it as material to work with rather than an obstacle.
Where PERF is headed
The five-year question is one PERF is actively working on, and Sergi did not pretend to have it solved. “You define it thinking you would define it looking forward, but in reality it’s the projects, the experiences, the people entering the team, that you connect only looking backward.”
The direction he could name is international. “Slightly more resources, and to work at the same level we offer in the Balearic Islands, Costa Brava, and Barcelona, but internationally, in a much more continuous way.” The house in Sweden is the first test of that. The main challenge in getting there, beyond defining the goal itself, is the one he had already named: navigating increasingly restrictive regulations.
Why we had this conversation
Conversations like this are the reason UNCOMMON exists. The business side of architecture, how you find the right clients, how you say what makes your work worth choosing, and how you grow without losing what made you good in the first place, rarely gets taught. It is the work we do with a small number of firms.
If you want more clarity on where your firm is headed, or help finding the right clients, you can request a conversation or join Shortlisted, our monthly newsletter for architects.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Sergi Sauras?
Sergi Sauras is a co-founder of PERF, an architecture studio based in Barcelona, alongside his partners Gonzalo Auger, Miquel Benedito, and Carlos Cardona.
What is PERF?
PERF is a young Barcelona architecture studio of around fifteen people, working mostly on residential projects along the Catalan coast and the Balearic Islands, with a house under way in Sweden and multifamily housing at a larger scale.
What is the UIA World Congress of Architects 2026?
It is the international congress of the International Union of Architects, held in Barcelona in 2026 under the theme “Becoming: Architectures for a planet in transition,” bringing thousands of architects together across the city.