Marta Catalan

Marta Catalan is an architect and urban designer, currently working at The University of Hong Kong in the Division of Landscape Architecture. She completed her PhD in the same institution. Her current research examines urban segregation, unequal living conditions, and gentrification, with a particular interest in transnational architectural and urban forms and norms. Her research, teaching and practice has taken place in Spain, Japan and Hong Kong.

Marta is the author of Globalizing Tradition: The Changing Careers of the Cafe in Spain and China (TDSR, 2018), co-author of Corruption and Speculative Urbanism in the Spanish Financial Crisis (University of Toronto Press, 2020) and Civic Urbanisms of the Other: The Commoning Practices of Hong Kong’s Foreign Domestic Workers (Amsterdam University Press, forthcoming).

Marta co-founded the architectural and urban design office Zira02. She has worked and collaborated with several architecture firms including Andres Jaque Office for Political Innovation, Abe Hitoshi Atelier and Izaskun Chinchilla Architects. Her projects have been awarded with the Europan, IDOM and the Hong Kong Jockey Club Design for Innovation prizes.

Education

• Master in Science of Architecture (M.S) ETSAM Polytechnic University of Madrid (2000 — 2009)
• GE4 Exchange Program 東北大学 / Tohoku University (2005 — 2006)
• Escuela Rosalia de Castro

Companies

• Ph.D., Adjunct Assistant Professor Division of Landscape The University of Hong Kong (2019)
• PhD Candidate & Course Tutor The University of Hong Kong (2014)
• Architect Founder Metronome (2014 — 2016)
• Resarch Advisor Princeton University (2016 — 2016)
• Lecturer Raffles Design Institute (2012 — 2014)
• Project Coordinator I3I Ingetec (2012 — 2012)
• Architect Zira02 (2006 — 2012)
• Architect Arditecnica (2009 — 2011)
• Architect Izaskun Chinchilla Architects (2006 — 2008)