Gaudí Code: The Untold Experience

Gaudí Code is a 70-minute immersive journey designed to reveal the hidden creative code that connects Antoni Gaudí’s entire body of work, becoming the first exhibition to bring together his major built and unbuilt masterpieces within a single narrative.

Its central idea is that Gaudí’s architecture was not the result of chaos, improvisation or intuition alone, but of a rigorous, highly structured and deeply technical creative process rooted in geometry, experimentation, engineering, materials and the observation of nature.

This coherence created a universal legacy that has inspired generations of architects worldwide and continues to influence how Gaudí’s work is studied, interpreted and developed today.

Developed in collaboration with the principal institutions like Sagrada Familia and the rest of Gaudí’s houses, and curated with Galdric Santana, President of the Gaudí Chair at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), the project uses immersive storytelling to uncover this common thread from beginning to end. The experience unfolds through a sequence of distinct environments: an opening manifesto, the historical context of Gaudí’s time, the tools and techniques behind his work, the Gaudí Mixed Reality Workshop, an immersive film inspired by the four elements of nature, and a final VR journey into architectural projects Gaudí imagined but never built.

Our design principle was simple: technology should help reveal Gaudí’s code, never distract from it.

Gaudí himself was profoundly technical. He experimented constantly with the technologies, materials and construction methods available to him, using physical models, geometry, structural systems and empirical testing as tools for invention. For this reason, technology became one of the pillars of the experience, but never its subject. Virtual reality, mixed reality, augmented reality, projection, stereoscopy, visual content, lighting and spatial sound are all used only where they help visitors understand how Gaudí thought, tested and created.

The most innovative element is the Gaudí Mixed Reality Workshop, a free-roam environment of approximately 200 m² where physical scenography and digital content are precisely aligned. Visitors enter a reconstruction of Gaudí’s workshop, move freely through the space, touch real furniture, tools and materials, and see digital layers bring his experiments, systems and working methods to life around them.

Tracking systems and technical components are concealed within the scenography itself, including furniture and workshop elements, allowing the technology to disappear into the environment. The result is a seamless transition between physical and digital space in which interaction feels intuitive rather than technological.
Behind the experience is a framework built on Unity 6. The system synchronises up to 40 PICO 4 Ultra Enterprise headsets in real time, managing visitor positions, interactions and station states across the workshop.

The journey continues with an immersive audiovisual film exploring Gaudí’s relationship with nature through the four elements, connecting his best-known built works with the natural systems and principles that inspired them.

The final section uses VR and Gaussian Splatting to take visitors inside projects Gaudí conceived but never realised, including the Hotel Attraction in New York, the Missions of Tangier and his monumental fountain for Plaça Catalunya. These reconstructions are based on historical research, drawings and architectural documentation, preserving a clear distinction between evidence and interpretation.

A key design decision was to reinterpret historical and archival material from the 19th and early 20th centuries through a distinctly contemporary visual language. Rather than reproducing the past in a purely historical way, we transformed it through modern graphic design, audiovisual storytelling and immersive media, making Gaudí’s world visually compelling and accessible to younger and international audiences while preserving the integrity of the original content.

A further innovation lies in accessibility. Complex architectural and academic content is structured in layers, allowing families and general audiences to experience the story intuitively while offering greater depth to visitors who wish to explore further.

Ultimately, Gaudí Code fits the Immersive Experience – Culture category because it does more than present Gaudí’s work: it reveals the system behind it. Visitors leave not only having seen his architecture, but understanding the scientific, technical and creative logic that connects it all.