José de Paiva holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge. He has taught at Cambridge and throughout the UK, in Europe and the United States. Prior to joining Eric Parry Architects, he was Visiting Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design.
His time in practice began in Lisbon more than 20 years ago. Since joining EPA in 2012, he has served as direct aide to the Principal in projects spanning architecture, publications and film as part of a broad range of activity.
José was involved in competition schemes for the Cities of London and Westminster; in exhibition designs for the Royal Academy, The British School at Rome and Sir John Soane’s Museum. He also advised the Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust on behalf of Eric Parry with a view to the considerable expansion of the public realm of the Naval Base (HMNB Portsmouth).
As a scholar, he has organised international conferences and seminars: on The Living Memory of Cities, first with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon and more recently in collaboration with London Metropolitan University; and on Presence, Person, Beauty, a series of talks on sacred space organised with the collaboration with Canon Peter Newby and Eric Parry.
He has also supervised a number of publications and books on the practice: Eric Parry Architects Volume 3 (Artifice, 2015 and 2018), Eric Parry Architects Volume 4 (Artifice, 2018), Eric Parry: Drawing (Sir John Soane’s Museum, 2019), The City Works: Eric Parry Architects (Rightangle, 2021), Eric Parry Architects Volume 5 (2023) and Eric Parry Architects Volume 6 (ongoing).
