This document provides biographical and portfolio information for Sara Abad Catalán, an architect and artist based in the UK and Spain. It summarizes her educational background, areas of research focus, and past professional experience leading architectural projects. Examples of her artistic works incorporating concepts of emotion, landscape, and phenomenology are also described, including site-specific installations, photographs, and a video installation.

1. Sara Abad CatalánBS3 4RQ UK
27 Oxford St.
Bristol (UK)
+44 (0)7510905838
saraabadcatalan@gmail.com
Skype
http://cargocollective.com/saraabadcatalan
http://fundacion.arquia.es/usuarios/2186/profesional

2. portfolio designed by Sara Abad Catalán.
2015

3. “The basis of my research and intelectual production. The source of my spiritual freedom and
the possibility of its development, rests on chapters of pure creation. Those moments have
been the key of my artistic production and the means to understand my architecture”
Le Corbusier
01

4. 02 Sara Abad Catalán, Other reality, 2014, Graz, digital photography, variable dimension.

5. Architect specialising in urban planning in the Technical School of Architecture in Valencia (Spain) at Polytechnic University (UPV, 2000). Also postgradua-
te studies in visual art, Master’s in Art Production at Faculty of Visual Art San Carlos in Valencia (UPV, 2013). Realization of the Master´s Thesis: “Creative
synergies. An approximation to the emotional space in architecture through art.” - an investigation cutting across all areas of art and architecture into
issues around the experience and perception of places of emotional significance. Nowadays, she is a researcher in the PhD Art: Research and Production
at Faculty of Visual Art San Carlos in Valencia, with “European Doctor” Mention. I´m in the continuity of the research of the emotional space through an
own personal artistic production in correspondence with a theoretical research.
I have 12 years project experience and have led medium scale architectural, landscape and urbanism projects around Spain and in Lisbon. As an archi-
tect, I find important to show various reflections of the function of lived-in space through the façade as a natural skin, the relationship between heights
and places for retreat, and through an inner courtyard as an intimate typological space. Another significant aspect is the inclusion of natural materials
and natural light.
Since my studies I has focused on atmospherically charged places in terms of the links they form between architecture and art - both as a source of ins-
piration for creative processes, and in the way they can carry meaning and influence mood. Over the course of my research I have identified five features
of emotinal spaces translations: visual transmissions; living creases, folds and liquids; meaning inside, vacuum as place; atmosphere of the senses and
impulse and passion of (loco)motion and travel. Another area of focus is the self-perception of emotionally charged places, which I express in site-spe-
cific installations, video dance, photographs and silk-screen prints.
One part of my artistic practice is linked to experiences that have situated the reflection around the emotion linked mainly to concepts such space, phe-
nomenology and the movement as interconnected variables. To build off the experience I looked for an opening of the emotional environment through
the artistic experience as a beginning of a knowledge process. Some of the pieces I make explore the idea of random, gesture, games and improvisa-
tion as creative reasons. Other explores the link between the emotion and public space, from the point of view of social participants, the relationship
between phenomenon of destruction and construction, the connection between space, silence and time rhythm…Also I work with nature. Other part
of my work explores the relationships between the physic space in the field of landscape and nature, with the sphere of emotions that those ones are
causing or can give them back to us. Some strategies have to do with the way of looking and concepts of phenomenology. The sensations that are asso-
ciated with here and now presence in contact with nature and landscape, that attend to the phenomenon capture, or the way as a detail, a reflection
or a scale change, can give us a point of abstraction in such a way that it transforms itself into the thread that connects with the imaginarium, dreams,
subconscious and the intimate. Photography and video art are the artistic languages that I use, through the visual and the sound.
profile
03

6. project:
Remodelling of a
public garden.
place: Castellón (Spain)
date: 2012
area: urban enviroment
budget: 30.000 euros
authors: co-authorship
architects:
Sara Abad Catalán
Sixto Lozano Esteban
technic architect:
Alberto Santamaría
enviroment engineering:
Reyes Salinas
biology:
María Diago
textures
urban garden and
landscape
04

7. The remodelling of the garden tended to attract the strength lines of territory and
landscape around it and incorporated them in its design.Those directions and lines
together with a concept that drift through ideas of game, random, fragment as if a
painting could be, drew in the garden concepts of heterogeneity, not hierarchy and
freedom in its tour.
05

8. project: workshop
Intervention in one sec-
tor of Suncoast of Málaga
under the keys: Territory,
Landscape and Tourism.
place: Málaga (Spain)
date: 2009.
area: territory
budget: -
authors: co-authorship
Mercedes Pérez
José A. González
Sara Abad Catalán
Jiao Li
Katell Malledan
Mariana Erecacho
Mercedes Pérez
Ana Díaz
tutors:
Laura Rives
Mónica Sgandurra
territory and
landscape
The workshop was dedicated to the concept
of Tourism in the conurbation of the “Costa
delSol” in Málaga and its important relations-
hip with the landscape. The aim was to find
keys on a territorial scale to be able to gene-
rate the specific use ofTourism.
Our team worked with the ideas of con-
necting the mountain and the sea tourism
through the river basins of the territory with
pedestrian walks and nature tours as well as
to reinforce the connections with the city (old
town) through good transport communica-
tions, cultural and leisure public places and
equipments.
06

9. 07

10. project:
Primary School
Gimnasium
place:Benissa-Alicante (Spain)
date: 2006-2009.
area: landscape architecture
budget: 480.000 euros
authors:
Architecture
Sara Abad Catalán
Technic Architecture
Marc Verdu
Francisa Roger
Installations
David Martínez
Composition façade
Sara A.Catalán (architecture)
Marc Verdu (music)
architecture and
landscape
08

11. The project responds to a functional programme of
being a sport place of a primary school. In the territory
it was situated 7 mts. below the existent school. This
project reflects a phenomenological approach to its
conzeptualization.Some materials of the surrounding
landscape were integrated linking with memory pla-
ce, as stones, gabions retaining walls and white walls
of houses in the town centre. The hall of the gymna-
sium is built from the excavation of the existent terra-
ce through visible concrete walls and the construction
of an aerial white box made by light, glass surfaces
and environment coming in.
09

12. The rhythem in the composition of
the façade of the porche (aluminum
tubes) was created in a synergic crea-
tion with a music composition pro-
duced by a musician. The translation
between the two languages was ge-
nerated through mathematics series.
10

13. 11

14. project:
Pergola and exterior
spaces at Primary School
Gimnasium
place:Benissa-Alicante (Spain)
date: 2009.
area: landscape architecture
budget: 100.000 euros
authors:
Architecture
Sara Abad Catalán
Student Architecture in practice
Rosa Bosch Ots
Technic Architecture
architecture and
landscape
12

15. This pergola was conceptualized to connect, in a cove-
red way, the gymnasium and the primary school, with a
diference of 7 m. of height connected with an existing
exterior staircases.
The project takes into account the consideration of the
movement of children, trying to create a dynamic and
unexpected covered tour under it.The project contains
ideas of organic design and rhythem, as well as, a mate-
rial that connects us with memory, time and landscape,
as cor-ten steel does.
13

16. 14
project: video-installation
Second Skin
place: Graz (Austria)
date: 2014
area: emotion-territory
materials: sound videoart
14´20´´in loop, cotton clothing
1,5m x 4m, projector
authors: Sara Abad Catalán
art and sound
landscape

17. Second Skin is a piece of video art that deals with emotional refugies, that
talks not only about the concept of phenomenology through Nature in
Graz, but also about my personal emotional experience here. Concepts
of movement and migration, that break the links with the original envi-
roment and known emotional places forced me to explore the need of
discovering new ones, and I found my emotional subjective experience in
contact with the universe of nature, mainly with water, that talked to me
about calm, strength, desire…, and the whole of emotional feelings that
are crossing us as human beings, that is life.
15

18. project: photography
Other reality
place: Graz (Austria)
date: 2014
area: emotion-territory
materials: digital photography
authors: Sara Abad Catalán
art and landscape
16

19. One part of my work explores the relationships between the physic space in the field of landscape and nature, with the sphere of emotions
that those ones are causing or can give them back to us. Some strategies have to do with the way of looking and concepts of phenomenology.
The sensations that are associated with here and now presence in contact with nature and landscape, that attend to the phenomenon captu-
re, or the way as a detail, a reflection or a scale change, can give us a point of abstraction in such a way that it transforms itself into the thread
that connects with the imaginarium, dreams, subconscious and the intimate are walks where my way to see and be in contact with the natural
environment are traveling, creating other small-landscapes, new habitats of emotional space, inviting to the observers to discover them.
I am interested the new landscapes re-created from the elements of the territory, from the light, fragments, details, moments, textures, co-
lors, whose crossing is transforming itself in an emotional drift.Water, earth and air are three of the four elements, the re-visited landscapes.
Photography and video art are the artistic languages that I use, through the visual and the sound. This work is defined in some of explored
territories of Austria and Croatia.
17

20. 18
project: video-installation
Emotional Topographies
place: Graz (Austria)
date: 2014
area: emotion-territory
authors: Sara Abad Catalán
art and landscape

21. This work deals with the collective subjectivity in the city of Graz. To understand the
metropolis as an emotional collective place that are in contact with us in a daily memory
way, have made me go through an anthropological method of approximation, the inter-
views. I am interested in what really think each person to understand the collective as
the sum of those ones, and to see the city as a whole of affects, impulses and passions
interacting in our movements and perceptions, far away from the classicals concepts
that link the city with architecture and urbanism issues, and then much more united to
concepts that were present in psicogeographical maps in 50´. Emotional Topographies
reveals with a representative number of interviews an approximation about the link be-
tween the spaces in the city with the emotional collective experiences, understanding
the motivations, the words, the issues that are in those ones, like cultural questions,
memory, movement, games, first and personal experiences, childhood, anthropological
meanings, psychological perceptions…This work also deals with my personal feeling of
migration and the need of relationships connected with daily life in the space of the city,
of connection with others, of making local links, emotional connections, to pick up an
invisible thread that joins me with the real and social feeling in the city of Graz.
19

22. urban design and
landscape
project: competition
Competition for an urban
project about adaptation
of the means of integra-
tion for the improvement
of accessibility to histo-
ric downtown Vejer de la
Frontera.
place: Cádiz (Spain)
date: 2009.
area: urban enviroment
budget: -
authors: co-authorship
Multidisciplinary team:
Reyes Salinas
Juan Blesa
Pepe Ribera
Sara Abad Catalán
María Diago
20

23. This project demanded a remodelling of an extensive and mainly
green area around a small village in the south of Spain. It had to be at
the same time a public leisure garden, a pedestrian and an easy com-
munication between the below level and the top in correspondence
with the old town. In addition, it had to solve the parking problem of
the town as well as to provide space for the massive public of festi-
vals in summer. The project responded with an organic conceptuali-
zation of connections at the same time that was designed with the
metaphoric idea of water drops on the land. The parking was situa-
ted on the top, in the limit band between the park and the city, below
a longitudinal viewpoint area.
21

24. 22
project: competition
Competition for a Civic
Center and the public spa-
ce, Benicàssim, Castellón.
place: Benicàssim, Castellón,
(Spain)
date: 2005.
area: 400 m2
budget: -
authors: own-authorship
Architecture:
Sara Abad Catalán
architecture and
landscape
Sara Abad Catalán, Untittle, painting,
2005, dim. 30 x 40 cm.

25. The civic centre explores the idea
of phenomenology connecting the
mountain and the sea through the
viewpoints in the building and exte-
rior spaces, the materials as water
sheets, green spaces, glass surfa-
ces, empty spaces…The inspiration
came from those elements of the
nature and the way to create inte-
ractions.The creative process came
from painting approximations.
23