By the end 2025, Refik Anadol will open a new venture called DATALAND at The Grand in downtown LA. The leading name in artificial intelligence and digital art, Anadol, announced the venture via its YouTube account, adding in a press release that Los Angeles was the "perfect city" for his vision of bringing the intelligence of machines and humans together in a museum setting.

Anadol was considered a prominent thinker at intersection of media and design arts well before his recent Machine Hallucinations series and debuts at MoMA, the Las Vegas Sphere, and 2023 Grammy Awards. (You can read Anadol's thoughts on the subject from his 2022 feature conservation here.) 

He now returns to the site of his 2018 installation at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, using his hero Frank Gehry’s architecture as the permanent base of which another experiment, this one to "develop a new paradigm"of museums, can be performed.

The studio’s long-serving partner, Efsun Erkiliç, is joining with Anadol as co-founder of the DATALAND venture, which is being designed with help from Arup and Gensler. Its other backers include Related Companies' California office. The first DATALAND exhibition will be an expansion of Anadol’s recent Large Nature Model work. Other programming details were said to be forthcoming. 

Anadol first came to California to study at UCLA's graduate Design Media Arts program (he was named the 2024 Edward A. Dickson Alumnus of the Year in May) and framed the project accordingly as the realization of one of his "biggest dreams."

Erkılıç backed his sentiments in her own statement, saying: "Our Studio has presented exhibitions in incredible places all around the world, but having a space of our own gives us a blank canvas to work with, allowing us to truly push ourselves to dream without boundaries. DATALAND will be a place where audiences of all ages are transported to new worlds of discovery, inspiration, and wonder. We are building a visionary museum that redefines learning and community, igniting the human spirit and fueling a journey into the beauty of our collective memories – the world of data."

The venture is also "committed to ethical data-gathering and AI practices." The important arts corridor that is Grand Avenue will soon feature Gehry's campus expansion for the Colburn School. The Broad nearby is also expanding with a new 55,000-square-foot design by its original architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro. DATALAND will be realized at 20,000 square feet and feature four main galleries. The exact opening date for the space not been confirmed.