The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao launched a groundbreaking new exhibition, Living Architecture: Gehry, by Turkish-American artist Refik Anadol. Opening on March 7th, 2025, and running until October 19th, 2025, the exhibition marks the debut of the museum’s In Situ exhibition series, a programme designed to showcase site-specific, interdisciplinary works that merge art, science, and technology.
Refik Anadol, a pioneer in AI-generated art, has reimagined the legendary architecture of Frank Gehry, the creator behind the Guggenheim Bilbao’s iconic structure. In Living Architecture: Gehry, Anadol employs artificial intelligence to transform Gehry’s architectural archive into a dynamic, ever-evolving experience that merges the worlds of architecture, data, and visual art. The installation is a multi-sensory journey that immerses visitors in a world where art and machine intelligence collaborate to create new, unconventional interpretations of architectural design.
This exhibition is a testament to the power of AI as a collaborative tool for artistic expression. Anadol’s use of 35 million ethically sourced images from Gehry’s archives, combined with AI’s ability to reimagine data, shapes an immersive experience that takes visitors from the actual, familiar forms of Gehry’s buildings to AI-generated futuristic visions. The exhibition’s scale is matched only by its ambition: utilising 50-channel projectors and an innovative AI model developed by Refik Anadol Studio. A meticulous calculation allowed Refik to use a unique museum’s space, with no straight walls, to immerse visitors in his creative universe.
“It takes a community to build something that special”, says Ryan Zurrer, a Founder of the 1OF1 collective, an exhibition partner. Refik Anadol’s studio has worked collaboratively, quantifying and inventing new materials. The process behind this installation is both intricate and innovative. A studio has developed a Large Architecture Model (LAM), a custom AI model that combines visual data from Gehry’s 65 years of work with open-source architectural images and data from the studio’s Large Nature Model. This fusion of architecture, data, and AI results in six captivating chapters that guide visitors through a narrative that starts with the raw architectural data and evolves into architectural dreams.
The studio’s creative approach is underpinned by a strong commitment to ethical data usage. For Living Architecture: Gehry, Anadol and his team worked exclusively with ethically sourced data, ensuring that no private data was used. The project also integrates sustainable cloud computing through collaborations with Google Cloud and Euskaltel, aligning with Anadol’s environmental awareness.
Curated by Lekha Hileman Waitoller, the exhibition also features a custom soundscape by Kerim Karaoglu, which amplifies the immersive nature of the installation and enhances the sensory impact of AI-generated visuals. The exhibition marks a new chapter for the Guggenheim Bilbao as it embraces the art of artificial intelligence and establishes its position as a key institution in the digital art movement.
“It is an exciting time to be an artist, as we can now quantify and invent new materials,” says Refik Anadol. “However, it’s not just about technology—it’s about where we are going. It’s a space where we can wonder and question.” As you enter the exhibition space, you are immersed in a creative world of art, colour, architecture, and music. Living architecture: Gehry explores the fusion of architecture and AI with no beginning or end. This exhibition is an opportunity to experience how AI can redefine our relationship with space and creativity. “It is a nostalgia for the future,” says Ryan Zurrer.
Read more about Refik Anadol’s creative world in our interview.
- Opening Date: March 7th, 2025
- Closing Date: October 19th, 2025
- Location: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Refik Anadol Studio
Installation view of Living Architecture: Gehry at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Courtesy of Refik Anadol Studio, 2025
