Antoni Gaudí’s Casa Batlló in Barcelona has served as the host for a major projection mapping artwork by Sofia Crespo over the weekend. Titled Structures of Being, the event drew 95,000 visitors across its showing on January 27th and 28th.

Created by Crespo with music by Robert M. Thomas, the project is described by organizers as “a spectacular setting that immersed the public in the nature contained inside Casa Batlló as well as in Gaudí's creative universe.” Created with the aid of artificial intelligence and the Barcelona Supercomputer Center, the project used data on the behavior of marine currents.

The artwork draws on Crespo’s interest in the boundaries of human perception in addition to her research into Gaudí’s own sources of inspiration. The resulting methodology saw Crespo use artificial neural networks to extract visual patterns from data inspired by the brain’s learning functions, training the networks on the natural forms that Gaudí used in Casa Batlló and other works, making them interact with 3D scans of the facade.

Crespo’s investigation into Gaudí’s design and its inspirations was merged with an analysis of species and elements present in the building itself, from living beings to minerals and shells used in construction materials. The result is what organizers call “a contemplative exploration of biodiversity and an immersive journey through the materials, beings, and natural phenomena which propelled Gaudí’s creativity.”

“The great challenge has been to convey Gaudí's inspirations on a facade that has a lot of personality and intricate details,” Crespo said about the project. “I wanted to capture how he worked and thought, including materials, symbology, and his more spiritual dimension. This has been a fascinating project to work on because it embraces art and technology, the cultural legacy of Barcelona, and a creator whose work remains alive and constantly reinterpreted by artists.”

Crespo was the second artist in residence to participate in the wider initiative known as The Heritage of Tomorrow program, which “invites artists who share some of Gaudí’s visionary qualities to create new artworks inspired by his work, thereby propelling his legacy into the future.” The 2022–23 artist in residence was Refik Anadol, whose projection Living Architecture drew 65,000 visitors in 2023.