Guggenheim Bilbao Explores New Paradigm Of AI Art With ‘in Situ: Refik Anadol’

Immersive AI Art installation created by Turkish Artist Refik Anadol pays homage to Architect Frank Gehry in inaugural 'in situ' exhibition at Guggenheim Bilbao.

REFIK ANADOL STUDIO Installation view of Living Architecture: Gehry at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao © Refik Anadol, Bilbao 2025 © Refik Anadol, Bilbao 2025

In a world first, architecture and AI meet at the frontier of a new digital landscape through the pioneering vision of Refik Anadol. Titled Living Architecture: Gehry, Anadol’s immersive experience is the first exhibition in the Guggenheim Bilbao’s new In situ series. Living Architecture: Gehry pays homage to the iconic architecture of Frank Gehry–the mastermind behind Guggenheim Bilbao’s legendary building–by using Artificial intelligence to reinterpret his archive into a new data universe of AI-generated visuals exploring the relationship between architecture and data.

Anadol is a Turkish artist living in Los Angeles who is spearheading the global Avant-garde movement of art based on data, and his Guggenheim Bilbao exhibition marks a Renaissance of conceptual art and a turning point in the way AI is applied to art.

Living Architecture: Gehry is a ground-breaking multimedia installation, powered by Artificial Intelligence and inspired by Gehry’s iconic architecture. The Guggenheim Bilbao’s new in situ exhibition series sits at the intersection of art, science and technology and is designed to spotlight site-specific, experiential artworks that create a dialogue with the Museum’s architecture.

REFIK ANADOL Photo: Efsun Erkilic. © Efsun Erkilic.

Guggenheim Bilbao’s new in situ exhibition series

To kick off the in situ series, curator Lekha Hileman Waitoller invited Refik Anadol–world-renowned media artist and pioneer in the aesthetics of machine intelligence–to create a bespoke installation in the museum.

Anadol’s installation Living Architecture: Gehry reimagines open-access imagery and translates archival material of Frank Gehry’s architectural projects into dynamic visual narratives, reinterpreting his designs through AI-generated forms. This installation debuts the Large Architecture Model (LAM), an innovative AI model developed by Refik Anadol Studio.

The scale and ambition of in situ: Refik Anadol is impressive–based on 35 million images obtained ethically from Frank Gehry’s archive–and the resulting installation has to be seen to be believed. Anadol used 50-channel projectors for the exhibition and trained a custom AI Model with ethical data and sustainable cloud computing. Anadol’s living architecture takes visitors on a multi-sensory journey in six chapters, moving from real images of Gehry’s architecture through AI-created versions of his designs to futuristic utopias and culminating each cycle with a cacophony of abstract imagery.

Refik Anadol

Refik Anadol (b. 1985, Istanbul, Turkey) is based in Los Angeles where he leads Refik Anadol Studio (RAS) and teaches at UCLA’s Department of Design Media Arts. Anadol’s pioneering multi-disciplinary practice examines creativity at the interface of humans and machines. Anadol uses the data that surrounds us as primary material and accesses the neural network of a computerized mind as a source of creative collaboration. He has been at the forefront of algorithmic art for more than a decade and has exhibited at institutions and museums including MoMA, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Serpentine Galleries and the Venice Architecture Biennale.

REFIK ANADOL STUDIO Installation view of Living Architecture: Gehry at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao © Refik Anadol, Bilbao 2025 © Refik Anadol, Bilbao 2025

Living Architecture

Curated by Lekha Hileman Waitoller with exhibition partner 10F1, technology partner Euskaltel and in collaboration with Google Cloud, the installation uses open-access imagery and Frank Gehry’s archive of architectural projects to create AI-generated forms in a mesmerizing multi-screen installation.

Anadol’s ‘Living Architecture’ installation is accompanied by a custom soundscape composed by Anadol’s longtime collaborator, Kerim Karaoglu which integrates sound recordings made in the museum and enhances the sensory immersion of the installation.

I met with Refik Anadol and curator Hileman Waitoller on the eve of the press preview as they were putting the final touches to the installation and approaching the end of a year-long journey which involved a team of people from Refik Anadol Studio and consumed many late nights. As I entered the specially built gallery, I was greeted by gargantuan walls filled with thousands of constantly changing visuals, accompanied by a digital soundtrack. Both the scale and visual impact of the installation were completely mesmerizing, and a little unsettling because of the immersive nature that momentarily messes with your inner compass as you move around the room.

As we walked around the vast gallery Refik Anadol gave me some insight into his impressive Living Architecture project which builds on his earlier work–WDCH Dreams–which used another Gehry-designed building to ask the questions “Can buildings learn and dream?”

Refik Anadol: “First of all we are inside one of our algorithmic chapters. The artwork has 35 million natural and architectural data–all ethically collected, no private data–including Frank Gehry’s buildings and our additional data from nature. Last year we started the work and now we are blending that with architecture so we can dream new words. It’s a dynamic artwork.”

Using open-source data and ethically obtained images from Gehry’s archive and Google cloud, Anadol’s immersive installation features all-encompassing visualizations of digitized memories created by employing neural networks. Anadol has succeeded in pushing forward the open canvas provided by the Guggenheim Bilbao gallery using a special camera system and software that recognises the height of the building.

"in situ: Refik Anadol" installation image. Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Photograph by Lee Sharrock. © Lee Sharrock

Ethically sourced data

While some detractors of AI refer to an uncensored Wild West of digital possibilities which can involve plagiarism of imagery, Anadol’s practice progresses the frontier of AI as an art form using only ethically sourced data and encompassing an environmental awareness too. Most importantly, Frank Gehry himself gave his blessing for the project.

I asked curator Lekha Hileman Waitoller what the initial brief was for the exhibition: “This is the inaugural ‘in situ’ exhibition. My idea for the series is that there’ll be two presentations a year, and all of them will take place in this gallery, which I consider to be a really iconic Frank Gehry gallery with these leaning walls that slope backwards.

All of the invitations to the artists are commissions so they’ll all be site-specific. Refik was my very first idea because I felt like his work completely embodied where I want to go with this series. I felt this was a great opportunity to work with inter-disciplinary artists. And then the fact that I knew Refik was interested in Gehry’s work. So he was the perfect artist for this. We thought there couldn’t be a better way to open the cycle than to work with Refik. You can see the scope of his ambition and how he’s adapting the tech he’s working with. Based on 35 million images he obtained ethically from the Frank Gehry archive. There are six different chapters, so if you spend enough time in the gallery you start to see a narrative. But it’s impossible to walk in and see the same thing twice.”

The AI debate

AI is proving to be a very divisive tool in the world at large as well as in the microcosm of the contemporary art world. A group of contemporary artists recently got together to protest against the first AI Art auction at Christie’s. The Christie’s auction Augmented Intelligence sale featured works by prominent digital artists including Refik Anadol as well as Alexander Reben, Charles Csuri, Claire Silver, Harold Cohen and Pindar Van Arman and surpassed expectations raising $728,784.

Some artists perceive AI to be damaging because of the potential for theft of other artists’ images, while artists in the Pro-AI camp perceive it as a useful new tool that can benefit creativity – in the same way as photography in the 19th century or electronic computers in the 20th century. I asked Anadol what hid position is in the AI debate.

Refik Anadol: “The majority of artists in the Christie’s auction were using their own data and their own models. The world is just paying attention now (to AI) that there’s a big change. When I started my journey ten years ago I knew that. If we need a new brush, we have to invent the pigment and we have to invent the brush. That’s the only way to have our own narratives and our own vocabulary. And that’s why we need these institutions (like the Guggenheim Bilbao) that can create these possibilities.”

Guggenheim Bilbao designed by Frank Gehry. © Lee Sharrock

Frank Gehry is a true creative hero

Anadol first met Frank Gehry in 2018 at the Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, where he had created an immersive light show to celebrate the centenary of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Anadol used AI to create projections inspired by the Philharmonic's archival material. Fast forward to 2024 and this time Gehry’s own design archive provides the source material and inspiration for the projections. I asked Anadol about that first meeting with Gehry almost a decade ago, and if he had reacted to this new project at the Guggenheim Bilbao.

“He’s a true hero but also extremely open-minded. When I had my projections exhibited at his Walt Disney Concert Hall building in LA, I sat with Frank for almost two hours with 200 keynote pages. He went through every image that we projected onto the building. It was a fascinating two hours. What I remember from that meeting he gave a big thumbs up. That was a wonderful reaction. This piece, when we got high level permission for the project, I saw him a couple of months ago at an event in LA and I showed him the renders (of the Guggenheim Bilbao exhibition). He gave this beautiful smile.”

At the forefront of the AI Avant-garde

Anadol demonstrates his committment to the AI Avant-garde movement with this epic new installation, which is testament to the power of AI as a valid artform. His notion of ‘Living Architecture’ encapsulates the first immersive AI installation in the world to interpret Frank Gehry’s architectural archive and vocabulary digitally and teach AI how to take it into the digital world.

Through his practice Anadol explores what human beings mean in the world of AI. The specially built gallery in the Guggenheim Bilbao offered a limitless canvas for Anadol and his team at Refik Anadol Studio to work with.

Anadol says it took a big team to realise this ambitious project: “Half of my studio are former students. As a team we are now 20 people who can speak fifteen languages in ten countries. And also we have a massive team in the museum as a support.”

Refik Anadol press conference at the Guggenheim Bilbao. Photograph by Lee Sharrock. © Lee Sharrock

A new chapter for Guggenheim Bilbao

Museum director Juan Ignacio Vidarte headed up his last press conference to announce the Refik Anadol exhibition before handing over the reins to Miren Arzalluz. This changing of the guard comes at a seminal moment for the Guggenheim Bilbao as it starts a new chapter with the In Situ series, which celebrates AI and cements its credibility as an important new art form.

Juan Ignacio Vidarte said at the press conference that Anadol’s installation “Combines Architecture and AI. The work is a living architecture because it’s work that feeds off the data of Frank Gehry. We’re opening a new chapter at this museum, which I hope will have a lot of possibility in the future.”

Refik Anadol Living Architecture: Gehry is a game-changing moment in the history of the Guggenheim Bilbao and a significant milestone in the trajectory of digital art. The digital legacy Anadol leaves with his breathtaking living architecture presented in this epic immersive exhibition is on a par with the physical legacy Frank Gehry’s iconic Guggenheim Bilbao building leaves for the world.

in situ: Refik Anadol runs from 7th March to 19th October, 2025 at Guggenheim Bilbao.

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"https://www.forbes.com/sites/leesharrock/2025/03/10/guggenheim-bilbao-explores-new-paradigm-of-ai-art-with-in-situ-refik-anadol/">Artificial Intelligenc,Contributor,Lee Sharrock