knock to come in
ka · ta · LACE
A door waiting for you.
An experience design studio. We design artifacts and encounters that let people feel something they always wanted to feel — and didn't know they did.
The name
catalyze=katalais
A catalyst doesn't produce the reaction: it creates the conditions for it to happen. That is exactly what we do.
We believe presence changes everything. We create the conditions for something real to happen — and what happens inside is yours. We design the container.
What we design for
Every experience we make chases at least one of them. If it chases none, we don't make it.
The doors
The narrative architecture behind a product or a moment: the emotional arc and step-by-step structure, handed over so your team can run it without us.
Objects that make something felt. Boxes, letters, kits, rituals — what people take home and keep opening years later.
Designed moments that make a brand distinctive and hard to copy. Brand lived, not explained.
we light the spark, you build the fire
Occasions
I design the whole experience, from the idea to the handover. For people, couples and families.
I design the architecture and hand it over ready for your team to run without me. For organizations, brands and products.
How we think
How do we design mirrors, not spotlights?
A spotlight puts someone at the center and exposes them. A mirror shows them something of themselves they couldn't see alone. It's the question we ask before designing anything — and the reason no one ends up exposed in an experience of ours.tours designed and scripted, ready for others to run
cities across Latin America, from Mexico City to Cusco
years designing experiences, across Europe and Latin America
The repertoire
Friends and family write messages to someone they love, and the words become a visible celebration.
The same, for teams. When someone leaves, grows or closes a project, the team tells them what they saw.
A surprise route through the places and people that matter. Each stop, a moment of love and a shared memory.
Love at a distance: those who love someone far away co-create a surprise that turns the miles into closeness.
Walking places not as tourists but as explorers, looking for surprise and awe. Walking with intention to reconnect with what matters.
Proof
Thirty tours designed and scripted across fifteen Latin American cities, among them Mexico City, Oaxaca, Guadalajara, Puerto Vallarta, Playa del Carmen, Panama City, San Salvador, Cuenca, Lima and Cusco. Each delivery a complete script, ready for any guide to run.
A methodology of our own that has already transformed dozens of people. Someone started drawing again after twenty years because someone else wrote that they remembered them drawing.
An ancestral celebration moved into the Guatemalan jungle. Ritual, food and community designed as a single arc.
Innovation experiences for executive teams across Europe and Latin America, designed so people who had never met left thinking differently.
A travel experience kit built around found objects. A writer received one and wrote an essay about it without realizing it had been designed.
Co-designed large-scale experience, with many hands and under real legal and political constraint. When the container matters more than ever.
What they say
“I couldn't stop crying from awe, from connection, from the love overflowing in me. It's the most meaningful gift I've ever received.”
Liliana Matheu
Received a Love Shower
“It was a great pleasure to work with Andrea. I was always amazed by her commitment to every project we tackled. What amazed me the most is that she always strives to make good things great while being very pragmatic when it comes to getting things done. I am really looking forward to the next project we can tackle together!”
Andreas Enneking
Head of Market Development & Value Advisory, SuccessFactors MEE
“Andrea is a highly motivated out of the box thinking person who always tries to apply new methodologies to reach the next level. She is an empathic listener and turns into action what she has discovered in an actionable, fun way. Her broad experience in design thinking and experience design is her super power to change work for good.”
York Thomsen
Head of Customer Advisory, SAP SuccessFactors MEE
Who
Experience designer, photographer and founder of Katalais. I work at the strategic and narrative layer: I design the idea, other hands execute it.
I lived sixteen years in Germany, five of them leading innovation experiences at SAP across Europe and Latin America. I came back to Guatemala to do this from here. I trained at Kaospilot and Kaospilot+ Berlin, and in Art of Hosting.
Every project starts with the same three questions: how might we cultivate the conditions for awe to emerge, without controlling it? How might we see others and be seen? How might we design for connection, playfulness and reflection?
but if it is, you already know
We believe the most radical act in a disconnected world is presence. We design experiences that make love visible — not the greeting-card kind, the kind that changes a life.