More than a century ago, Antoni Gaudí was already designing architecture that seemed to belong to the future. He studied the branching structures of trees, experimented with hanging chains to understand how gravity could determine architectural form, worked with complex geometry and allowed light, colour and nature to become part of the structure itself. Buildings such as Casa Batlló, Park Güell and the Sagrada Família still feel remarkably unconventional today. Yet Gaudí died in Barcelona on 10 June 1926, long before computers became part of architectural practice and almost a century before artificial intelligence began generating architectural forms within seconds. In 2026, exactly 100 years after his death, those two worlds are being deliberately brought together through AI x Gaudí, an international architecture and design competition created by Archademy.ai in collaboration with the Antoni Gaudí Foundation. 

The timing is particularly fitting. 2026 is officially being celebrated as Gaudí Year, marking the centenary of the architect's death, while Barcelona has also become the World Capital of Architecture 2026. The city is hosting an extensive programme of architectural and cultural events throughout the year, turning Barcelona into a global stage for conversations about architecture's past and future. Spain Against that backdrop, AI x Gaudí asks a fascinating question: if Gaudí were designing today, with access to artificial intelligence and contemporary computational tools, what might he do with them?

Before Artificial Intelligence, Gaudí Looked to Nature

To understand why Gaudí and artificial intelligence make such an interesting combination, it helps to understand that Gaudí was much more than the creator of unusually shaped buildings. Born in Catalonia in 1852 and graduating from the Barcelona School of Architecture in 1878, he developed an architectural language that increasingly departed from conventional approaches. His work combined architecture with engineering, craftsmanship, geometry, religion, Catalan culture and an intense observation of the natural world. Rather than treating nature as decoration, Gaudí investigated the physical principles behind it. The Catalan government's official Gaudí Year programme describes how he generated organic forms by applying physical laws found in nature while simultaneously experimenting with geometry, new construction techniques and materials ranging from wrought iron to broken ceramic trencadís. GenCat

Look closely at the interior of the Sagrada Família, for example, and its famous columns begin to resemble a forest. They branch as they rise, distributing structural forces while creating the sensation of standing beneath a canopy. Elsewhere, Gaudí experimented with curves and geometries that seem almost biological. What appears spontaneous or whimsical is often underpinned by surprisingly rigorous structural thinking. His architecture could be playful, colourful and organic, but that did not mean it was arbitrary.

This is one reason the connection with today's computational design tools is so interesting. Gaudí did not have software capable of calculating and visualizing thousands of possibilities instantaneously. Instead, he experimented physically. Models, geometry, observation and gravity became design tools. In that sense, his methods were experimental long before architects could open a laptop and ask an algorithm to explore variations of a structure.

The technology has changed enormously.

The desire to experiment has not.

1926 Meets 2026

Gaudí's life ended unexpectedly in Barcelona in June 1926, when he died after being struck by a tram. At the time, his greatest project — the Sagrada Família — remained unfinished. A century later, his architecture has become inseparable from the identity of Barcelona, and his influence extends far beyond Catalonia. Gaudí Year 2026 has therefore been conceived not simply as a memorial but as an opportunity to examine his work again from contemporary perspectives. La Pedrera

That makes the arrival of AI x Gaudí particularly timely. Rather than asking architects to reproduce Gaudí's recognizable aesthetic, the competition asks them to explore the principles behind his work and consider how those principles might respond to a modern urban problem using today's technology. The Antoni Gaudí Foundation explicitly says that the competition is not intended to imitate Gaudí aesthetically. Instead, participants are asked to use his principles and constructive logic alongside advanced artificial intelligence.

That distinction is important.

It would be relatively easy to ask an AI image generator to produce a futuristic building covered in colourful mosaics, twisting towers and Gaudí-like curves. The result might immediately remind us of Barcelona, but it would tell us relatively little about Gaudí's actual architectural thinking.

AI x Gaudí proposes something more ambitious: don't copy what Gaudí's buildings look like. Explore how Gaudí thought.

The Gaudí Nexus

The competition revolves around a proposal called The Gaudí Nexus, located around Barcelona's Sagrada Família. Participants are being asked to rethink the surrounding public space while designing a local market and a digital culture centre. The architectural challenge is tied to a very contemporary urban issue: how can a city accommodate enormous numbers of international visitors without allowing everyday neighbourhood life to disappear?

It is a particularly relevant question around the Sagrada Família. Gaudí's unfinished basilica has become one of Barcelona's defining international attractions, while at the same time remaining embedded within a living residential neighbourhood. The competition therefore asks architects to imagine a place where these two realities can coexist. A neighbourhood market and community meeting spaces would serve residents, while cultural and educational areas would help visitors understand Gaudí's work before entering the basilica. The aim, according to the competition brief, is to create exchange between residents and visitors without allowing the area to become something resembling a theme park. 

That gives the project considerably more depth than a competition simply asking, What would Gaudí design with AI?

The real question is closer to: Can Gaudí's design principles, interpreted through twenty-first-century technology, help address a twenty-first-century city problem?

And that is where the story becomes much more interesting.

Teaching AI to Think Beyond the Pretty Picture

Artificial intelligence has quickly become capable of producing spectacular architectural imagery. Enter a description and, within moments, an image can appear showing a futuristic hotel, an impossible villa or an entire city that has never existed.

But architecture is not simply an image.

A building needs entrances. People need to move through it. Structures need to stand. Rooms require appropriate proportions. Materials need to meet. Daylight has to enter. Public and private spaces need to function together. And eventually someone needs to figure out how all of it could actually be built.

AI x Gaudí attempts to address this gap by combining the competition with an educational programme in advanced AI workflows. Participants receive training involving ComfyUI and Flux.2, rather than relying solely on conventional text-to-image generation. According to the competition organizers, these node-based workflows are intended to give designers greater control over elements such as curves, volumes, circulation and construction details. 

The Antoni Gaudí Foundation also says participants will have access to a dedicated AI model trained with specific documentary material, alongside webinars exploring Gaudí and biomimicry. 

The submitted architecture therefore becomes more than a final image. It is intended to demonstrate how participants have applied what they learned to an actual design problem.

That approach points toward a broader conversation happening throughout architecture: AI may be most useful when it becomes part of the design process rather than simply a machine for producing beautiful images.

From Gaudí's Geometry to Generative Design

This is perhaps where Gaudí's working methods and contemporary computational design unexpectedly begin to resemble one another.

Gaudí was deeply interested in systems capable of generating form. His architecture made use of concepts such as catenary structures, ruled geometry, biomimicry and geometries derived from natural and structural forces. Instead of beginning only with a decorative shape and then forcing engineering into it, form and structure could develop together.

AI x Gaudí specifically asks participants to investigate principles including ruled geometry, catenary structures, organic light and biomimicry, placing them within a project where form, structure and function are intended to interact rather than exist independently. ArchDaily

That makes the comparison with generative technology surprisingly natural.

A designer using computational tools can establish conditions, relationships and constraints and then explore numerous possible outcomes. Gaudí obviously wasn't using machine learning, but his experimental models similarly allowed physical forces and geometric rules to influence form.

One approach used gravity.

The other can use algorithms.

Both raise the same fundamental architectural question: what happens when the designer creates a system for discovering form instead of simply drawing the final form from the beginning?

Gaudí Was Already Learning From Nature

Another important part of the competition is biomimicry — learning from the systems, forms and processes found in nature.

This is especially appropriate when discussing Gaudí. His architecture demonstrates that nature-inspired design does not simply mean adding plants to buildings or decorating interiors with floral patterns. Nature can influence structure, geometry, movement, ventilation, light and the way materials behave.

A tree, for example, doesn't place branches randomly. Its form responds to forces, growth, material efficiency and access to light. Bones combine strength with relatively little material. Shells distribute forces through curved surfaces. Honeycombs create repeating structures capable of enclosing space efficiently.

For contemporary architects, computational tools and AI make it possible to study, simulate and generate variations based on such principles far more rapidly than previous generations could.

But the technology also introduces a danger.

It is extremely easy to confuse organic-looking architecture with architecture genuinely informed by nature.

A building covered in curves is not automatically biomimetic. Gaudí's legacy becomes more interesting when designers look beyond his visual vocabulary and examine why those curves, geometries and structural systems existed in the first place.

That appears to be precisely the territory AI x Gaudí wants participants to explore.

What Would Gaudí Have Thought of AI?

We can never know whether Gaudí would have embraced artificial intelligence, rejected it or used it in ways nobody today would expect. Any confident answer would be speculation.

His documented work does, however, show an architect willing to experiment with the technologies, materials and structural knowledge available during his lifetime. The official Gaudí Year programme emphasizes his combination of traditional influences with technological innovation and his application of geometry and physical laws to architectural form. GenCat

That makes a more useful question possible.

Not “Would Gaudí use AI?”

But rather:

“Can architects use AI with the same spirit of experimentation Gaudí brought to the tools available in his own time?”

There is an important difference between the two.

AI can produce hundreds of options incredibly quickly, but quantity does not automatically produce architectural quality. Someone still has to understand proportion, structure, material, context and human experience well enough to decide which possibilities deserve to survive.

Perhaps AI doesn't reduce the importance of the architect at all.

Perhaps it changes what the architect needs to be good at.

From Architecture to Furniture

Interestingly, AI x Gaudí doesn't stop at the scale of buildings and urban design. The Antoni Gaudí Foundation says there is also an independent award for an optional furniture or architectural-object design inspired by Gaudí's methods. fundacionantoniogaudi.org

That is particularly fascinating because Gaudí never treated architecture and interior design as completely separate worlds.

His interiors could incorporate furniture, doors, handles, ironwork, ceramics, ceilings and lighting as parts of a larger architectural composition. The line between building and object often became blurred.

That philosophy feels surprisingly contemporary.

Today's most interesting interiors increasingly combine architecture, furniture and art rather than treating furniture as something simply placed into an empty room afterwards. A chair can become sculpture. A lamp can become an architectural object. A side table can introduce an organic curve that changes the character of an otherwise geometric space.

Artificial intelligence could expand this experimentation dramatically. Designers might explore hundreds of variations of a chair inspired not by the appearance of Gaudí's buildings, but by principles of branching, structural efficiency, ergonomic curvature or biomimicry.

Again, the interesting part isn't asking AI to make something “look like Gaudí.”

It's asking what we can still learn from Gaudí.

Barcelona Becomes the Perfect Laboratory

There could hardly be a more appropriate city for this experiment.

In 2026, Barcelona is both celebrating 100 years since Gaudí's death and serving as the World Capital of Architecture. The programme includes more than 1,500 activities across the city's ten districts, while the International Union of Architects' World Congress is also taking place in Barcelona. Spain

At the same time, Gaudí's architecture continues to evolve as part of the living city rather than remaining frozen in history. The Sagrada Família's 2026 centenary programme itself describes the year as a convergence of three major moments: Gaudí's centenary, the completion of the Tower of Jesus Christ at 172.5 metres, and Barcelona's World Capital of Architecture designation. Sagrada Familia

So Barcelona finds itself in an unusual position.

It is looking backward and forward at exactly the same moment.

The city is celebrating an architect born in the nineteenth century while architects are experimenting with technology that may fundamentally alter the profession in the twenty-first.

And right between those two moments stands the Sagrada Família.

A Century Later, Gaudí Still Asks Us to Experiment

There is something wonderfully appropriate about using Gaudí's legacy to question the future of architecture.

One hundred years after his death, the most interesting thing about his work may not be its instantly recognizable curves, colourful ceramics or fantastical façades. It may be the curiosity behind them.

Gaudí observed nature. He experimented with geometry. He tested structures. He collaborated with craftspeople. He questioned conventional forms. And he developed architectural solutions that were so unusual that many still look contemporary today.

AI now gives architects an entirely new set of experimental tools.

The challenge will be deciding what to do with them.

If artificial intelligence is used simply to generate increasingly spectacular images, architecture risks becoming an endless stream of beautiful but superficial possibilities. If it is used to investigate structure, material, geometry, environmental conditions, human movement and the relationship between buildings and their communities, the conversation becomes much more meaningful.

That is why AI x Gaudí is an interesting architectural experiment beyond the competition itself.

It connects an architect who spent his life studying how nature could inform architecture with a generation of designers learning how machines can participate in the creative process. It places that experiment beside Gaudí's greatest unfinished work, in a city simultaneously celebrating his past and debating its own future.

Gaudí never saw artificial intelligence.

But perhaps the spirit behind his work provides one of the most useful lessons for architects entering the AI era:

Don't use a new tool simply to make something that looks new. Use it to discover something you couldn't have discovered before.