Refik Anadol adapts Gaudi's Casa Batlló to digital art

Refik Anadol, a Turkish-American director and media artist, created 'Casa Batlló: Living Architecture' in response to Casa Batlló's breathtaking facade. The artwork will be presented live at Rockefeller Plaza in New York on 10 May 2022, during the 21st Century Marquee exhibition. The multi-sensory experience will also be installed via mapping projection and exhibition at Casa Batlló in Barcelona on May 7, 2022, three days before the auction. The monumental 1906 building by Antoni Gaudi, Casa Batlló, becomes the first ever UNESCO World Heritage Site to evolve into a constantly changing, live NFT. 10% of the proceeds from the sale of the astonishing artwork will be donated to the Associació Aprenem Autisme and Fundació Adana institutions. “Gaudí is an amazing inspiration for any creator and Casa Batlló a dream work to dive into,” says Refik Anadol. “From its organic architecture, inspired in nature, to the smallest details on its many mosaics, it is a privilege to reinterpret such an alive legacy and bring it to the 21st century, guided by artificial intelligence,” he adds.

Casa Batlló, the Art Nouveau icon, is a magnum opus by Gaudi, one of the greatest architects of all time, conceived in total creative freedom. Its canvas draws inspiration from marine life, evokes nature and fantasy in the viewers. The symbolic facade, effervescent and marine, turns sculptures, recycled materials, and decontextualized objects into captivating art that makes passersby halt to absorb the vision.

The collaboration between Casa Batlló and Refik Anadol led to the manifestation of ‘Casa Batlló: Living Architecture’. Casa Batlló had launched its engaging, award-winning tour of Gaudí’s jewel, a year ago, showcased as a journey – with exclusive soundtrack, audio-story, installations and digital rooms – enhancing the museum experience and enticing younger audiences worldwide. Refik Anadol was brought on board for the tour’s grand finale with the piece ‘In the Mind of Gaudí’, a 360-experience through artificial intelligence and visual sculpting inside a six-screen space set up at the building’s basement, to instant acclaim.“Casa Batlló’s mission is to amplify Gaudí’s magic, and Refik Anadol is the perfect fellow traveller for this journey,” shares Gary Gautier, Manager, Casa Batlló. “Refik connects past, present, and future, reminding us of the innovative, humanist and visionary Gaudí,” he adds.

Anadol is a trailblazing digital artist in the aesthetics of data and machine intelligence, finding creativity at the junction of humans and machines. His artistic language comfortably dwells where art and technology meet to expand the possibilities of architecture beyond space and time. His remarkable reinterpretation of Gaudi’s work using environmental data gathered in real-time, adds another feather to his cap. Anadol’s site-specific artificial intelligence data sculptures and paintings, live audio/visual presentations, and enticing installations take many forms and encourage us to reassess our communication with the physical world, its temporal and spatial dimensions, and the creative potential of machines. ‘Casa Batlló: Living Architecture’ exhibits the artist’s extreme visualisations that bring the Gaudí façade both to the forefront in our cultural collective memory as well as enforce its position in the digital space in this historic sale.