"Art & Well-being" at the Eric Miralles Foundation

Can artistic creation become a tool for care and resilience?
As part of Barcelona World Capital of Architecture 2026, the Enric Miralles Foundation presents "Art & Wellbeing: Artistic Practices in Care Settings," an interdisciplinary dialogue exploring the role of art in emotional health, people's care, and its place in society.
Through conversations among professionals in psychology, architecture, art, and cultural research, experiences will be discussed where creativity acts as an emotional mediator, fostering processes of adaptation, personal reconstruction, and wellbeing.

Care can no longer be understood solely as a medical practice. In a context marked by the emotional, social, and environmental complexity of contemporary life, the need arises to rethink how and where wellbeing takes place.
This gathering proposes a shift: from art as object to art as practice, from space as container to space as experience, from care as intervention to care as relationship.

Within this framework, art is positioned as a relational technology, capable of activating processes of attention, perception, and transformation in contexts of vulnerability. Artistic creation is not limited to representing experience; it constructs it, generating new ways of inhabiting the body, time, and environment.
Beyond its aesthetic dimension, art emerges as a cultural infrastructure of care: a system capable of sustaining, accompanying, and transforming the human experience. In this sense, architecture expands to incorporate sensory, emotional, and relational dimensions that place wellbeing at the center of the contemporary project.

This dialogue will bring together:
-Speakers:
- Pilar Cortada, Director of Eina Obra - Eina University Center for Design and Art, PhD in Contemporary Aesthetic Philosophy
- Jordi Comas, Founding Architect of Comas - Pont Arquitectes
- Guila Fidel, Clinical Psychologist in the Psychiatry Service and Coordinator of "Arts & Health" Activities at Vall d'Hebron University Hospital
- Adriana Jarrín, PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology, President of the International Network of Oncological Yoga, Author of "Yoga in Times of Cancer."

Through dialogue, the event proposes care as an intersection between body, mind, and environment, where aesthetic experience becomes a mediator between the individual and the collective.
"Art & Wellbeing" is part of the program of dialogues activating the exhibition "Healing Architectures: Designing Spaces of Care," which presents the results of the 2025 Spring Advanced Studio of the Yale School of Architecture, led by Benedetta Tagliabue (Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professor of Architectural Design) and Can Vu Bui (Yale Professor and Critic).
The exhibition reflects on how architecture can become a key tool for the emotional and physical support of people affected by cancer, exploring, through student work, the design of a new Kálida Center in Barcelona, next to the Vall d'Hebron University Hospital, inspired by the philosophy of Maggie's Centres.
This activity is part of the Barcelona 2026 World Capital of Architecture program, a UNESCO and International Union of Architects (UIA) distinction awarded to the city hosting the UIA World Congress of Architects, making it a global forum for architecture, urbanism, and landscaping. From February 12 to December 13, a multidisciplinary program will unfold in collaboration with schools, universities, and professional and cultural entities throughout Catalonia.
Barcelona 2026 World Capital of Architecture is supported by Barcelona City Council, the Government of Catalonia, and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda.