Casa Batlló Contemporary marks a new chapter for one of Barcelona’s most iconic buildings. Housed within Antoni Gaudí’s inventive Art Nouveau masterpiece, the newly opened contemporary art gallery launches in tandem with the centenary of the Catalan architect’s death and Barcelona’s designation as UNESCO-UIA World Capital of Architecture 2026.
Spanning 230 square metres, the new exhibition space has been designed by emerging local architecture and design studio Mesura and is located on the building’s second floor, within rooms that were previously inaccessible to the public. Now unveiled, Casa Batlló Contemporary offers a rare opportunity to experience contemporary art within one of the city’s most storied architectural landmarks.
Designed by Gaudí between 1904 and 1906 as a radical remodelling of an 1877 building, Casa Batlló is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and among Barcelona’s most visited cultural destinations since opening to the public in 2002. Its organic, fluid forms and richly decorative surfaces exemplify modernisme—the Catalan interpretation of Art Nouveau—where architecture is conceived as a living, breathing organism.
While the building has undergone major refurbishments in the 1970s and 1990s, Gaudí’s singular vision has endured, supported by ongoing conservation and restoration efforts. The newly opened gallery occupies spaces once used as residential apartments and later as conservation and maintenance workshops. Today, these rooms are reimagined as a platform for dialogue between heritage and contemporary artistic expression.
The gallery will host two exhibitions per year, each exploring Gaudí’s legacy through new perspectives, creative experimentation, and contemporary artistic practices.
According to Maria Bernat, Director of Casa Batlló Contemporary, the project required “an intervention that could engage the present while respecting the building’s legacy.” She notes that Mesura’s design honours Gaudí’s spirit of experimentation, craftsmanship, and material innovation, while establishing a distinct identity of its own.
For Mesura, the challenge lay in balancing architectural expression with historical sensitivity. “Our approach was not about adding, but about listening,” explains Carlos Dimas, partner at the studio. “We understood the project as a dialogue with Gaudí’s work rather than an imposition upon it.” Central to the design was Gaudí’s philosophy of architecture as a living entity, intrinsically linked to nature.
The defining feature of the space is a rippling metallic ceiling, conceived as the trace of a single drop of water falling onto a still surface. The gesture references the Mediterranean Sea that frames Barcelona and echoes the undulating lines that define Gaudí’s nature-inspired geometry. Chosen for its reflective and mutable qualities, the metal surface captures and refracts light, behaving, as Dimas describes, “almost like a liquid—constantly changing.”
To realise the ceiling, Mesura collaborated with Oxido Studio, a local specialist in engineering, craftsmanship, and digital production. Together, they adapted an industrial technique more commonly associated with the automotive industry—impulsion-based metal forming—using a robotic arm to sculpt 1.2mm-thick aluminium sheets into fluid, undulating forms inspired by concentric ripples on water.
Beyond its poetic presence, the ceiling’s sculpted topography performs a crucial structural role. “On their own, the metal sheets would lack rigidity,” explains Dimas. “But by introducing this rippled, three-dimensional geometry, the surface gains strength. The curvature and relief stiffen the metal, allowing the ceiling to support itself without the need for heavy secondary frameworks.” The result is a surface that is both technically intelligent and visually expressive.
Balancing the kinetic energy of the ceiling is a new microcement floor, set to be completed in May 2026. Finished in green, it draws from the hues of Casa Batlló’s mosaic-clad façade, reinforcing the building’s deep connection to nature. Its smooth, restrained surface acts as a deliberate counterpoint—grounding the space beneath the movement above.
Mesura’s intervention was shaped by close collaboration with the Casa Batlló team, including extensive research into Gaudí’s architectural language, material choices, and chromatic sensibility. In parallel, the in-house restoration team, led by architect Xavier Villanueva, carefully recovered and preserved original elements of the space, from woodwork to windows, ensuring continuity between past and present.
Intervening within Gaudí’s masterpiece was, as Dimas describes, “both a privilege and a responsibility.” “Gaudí is not only a reference within our profession,” he notes, “but a cultural figure who transcends architecture and forms part of our collective identity in Barcelona. His work has shaped the city’s imagination and soul.”
Casa Batlló, he adds, carries an “extraordinary historical and symbolic weight,” and any architectural gesture within it must acknowledge that “the building itself must always remain the protagonist.” This philosophy underpins the restraint and clarity of Mesura’s design—an intervention conceived not to dominate, but to create space for art to speak.
The gallery’s inaugural exhibition, Beyond the Façade (31 January – 17 May 2026), is by London-based artist Matt Clark, founder of United Visual Artists. The exhibition brings together light studies, projections, and kinetic sculpture, extending Clark’s ongoing exploration of perception, movement, and architecture.
It also builds upon Hidden Order, an audiovisual projection-mapping work created by Clark for Casa Batlló’s façade, shown on 31 January and 1 February. Part of a continuing series of artistic interventions that animate the building’s exterior, the work reflects on the hidden systems and natural logic that inspired Gaudí—revealing an underlying order beneath apparent chaos.
Image credit: Claudia Maurino
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