A Massive Attack Collaborator Breathes New Life into Gaudí’s Casa Batlló
United Visual Artists, whose practice spans two decades of politically charged live shows for the British band, marks the centennial of the architect's death with a live audiovisual show and exhibition
On a recent February evening, the streetlights along Barcelona’s Passeig de Gràcia in the Eixample district went dark. A crowd gathered beneath a nearly full moon as a projected countdown ticked across the facade of Casa Batlló, the five-story building radically transformed by Antoni Gaudí in 1904. When the clock hit zero, sound, light, and movement surged across and, at times, spilled over the 50-foot-wide, 260-foot-high surface.
For 11 minutes and 42 seconds, Gaudí’s undulating architecture became a living canvas for “Hidden Order,” Casa Batlló’s fifth annual facade-mapping event. The new work comes from London-based collective United Visual Artists, founded by artist Matt Clark, whose practice spans two decades of politically charged live shows for British band Massive Attack alongside international commissions for institutions including London’s Victoria & Albert Museum and Japan’s Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM).
Presented free to the public on January 31 and February 1, “Hidden Order” coincided with the unveiling of a new 2,480-square-foot contemporary art gallery designed by Barcelona-based architecture firm Mesura on Casa Batlló’s second floor. Titled “Beyond the Facade,” the debut exhibition— also by United Visual Artists—runs through May 17. Together, the projects launch Gaudí Year 2026, marking a century since the architect’s death, and align with Barcelona’s designation as World Capital of Architecture 2026.
Clark says he was drawn to Casa Batlló’s unique relationship with the organic form. “It feels alive,” he explains. “The facade, with its skin- and bone-like elements, suggests a body—and the rooms inside feel like the internal spaces of a living organism.” Created with six high-powered digital projectors mounted across the street, along with lasers and architectural lighting positioned on balconies and within the building, “Hidden Order” imagines how the structure might behave “if it were allowed to move, breathe, and perform.”
Set to a score by Belgian composer Daniel J. Thibaut, the performance combined recorded and live infrared motion-capture choreography by dancer Fukiko Takase. Waves ripple across the facade as if water has been disturbed; digital grids fracture into new geometries; a seemingly weightless 3D female form modeled on Takase reaches outward, multiplies, and dissolves into a vortex. In a striking crescendo, Casa Batlló’s second floor pulses with blood-red light. A human silhouette briefly appears within before red and orange pulses inflame the entire building. Reptilian scales erupt across Gaudí’s ceramic tiled roof, amplifying its long-interpreted resemblance to a mystical dragon’s back. “The intent is a big spectacle,” says Clark. “It needed to be turned up to 11.”
The meticulously choreographed piece was not complete without some last minute fine-tuning. “Projectors are not easy to use on reflective or curved surfaces,” Clark admits. “And on Casa Batlló, almost nothing is flat—even the tiles reflect light.”
Inside, “Beyond the Facade” unfolds as a progression from dark to light. In the first dim gallery, screens present LED works influenced by Plato’s concept of the space between the mental and physical worlds—“a philosophical realm where patterns emerge but never fully resolve,” Clark says. An adjacent corridor features “micro poems,” or haiku-like fragments such as “Cellular…Shell…Spawning” generated by an AI tool that Clark created. The exhibition culminates in a bright final room where seven kinetic sculptures—Clark’s “seven suns”—slowly rotate mirrored surfaces, reflecting sunlight and visitors in equal measure.
Located in an area long closed to the public—where alterations by previous tenants had obscured much of Gaudí’s original vision—the new gallery space will introduce contemporary interventions while acknowledging history upon its completion in May. A removable stainless-steel ceiling, screen-printed and robotically bent into a rippling form, reveals a fluid geometry that echoes United Visual Artists’ mapping. “We didn’t collaborate with Matt Clark, so it’s interesting that we arrived at similar metaphors,” says Carlos Dimas, co-founder and partner at Mesura. A green micro-cement floor incorporates trace fragments that remained from original mosaic tiles, while Casa Batlló’s restoration team reinstated the historic woodwork and stained glass.
When Gaudí reimagined Casa Batlló in 1904, its pastel hues, dragon-like roofline, and innovative top-down construction provoked both awe and ire. “The straight line belongs to men, the curved one to God,” the Catalan architect famously declared—a philosophy evident in a building where finding a true straight line remains a challenge for the more than one million annual visitors.
Today, the privately owned landmark—recognized as a Modernist masterpiece and UNESCO World Heritage Site—serves not only as a monument to Gaudí’s vision but also as a platform for experimental contemporary art. With United Visual Artists’s immersive interventions, Casa Batlló continues to evolve, proving that even one of architecture’s most iconic facades can still surprise, transform, and come vividly to life.