Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Spring has come early in Barcelona. Perched on a balcony overlooking Passeig de Gràcia, I watch as Casa Batlló, Gaudí’s 1904 organic Art Nouveau masterpiece, comes alive with green shoots, bright blossoms and blooms. All digital, algorithmic, new growth. Quayola, an Italian contemporary artist who works with new technology, has mapped “Arborescent” — which he describes as a “digital tribute to nature” — on to the facade. It’s an artwork on an artwork that was once a family home. “I wanted to use the facade as a gate to somewhere else,” says Quayola. The 10-minute projection features various tree species spread across Gaudí’s skeletal framework of stone balconies and mosaics, to a pounding soundtrack. Waves of smartphones sparkle on the street below. A number of curators, custodians and communities have recently been reminding us of the multi-faceted value of turning houses into canvases. But how does it change the tenor of the building? And the area? And what do residents make of it? Especially if the art is here today and gone tomorrow. In Barcelona, the Batllós are long gone. But in 1993, when this Unesco World Heritage site was bought by its current owners, the Bernat family, two elderly sitting tenants were still living on the third floor (the last one passed away in 2019). They were profoundly unimpressed by the transformation of the building into a museum — and tourist attraction drawing more than a million visitors a year. “Living at Casa Batlló is noisy,” acknowledges Gary Gautier, chief executive of the cultural institution. “You’re going through a gate with a flood of people. It’s not comfortable to live in a place that has become a museum or a monument.” Gautier says that since the museum’s most recent renovations, which began in 2018, it has collaborated with artists from different disciplines, both popular and avant-garde, who “share Gaudí’s innovative, humanistic and visionary mindset” to create interactive and immersive experiences. This external projection takes those experiences to a broader audience: over two evenings, it draws 110,000 visitors. Previous editions have seen the building mapped by Refik Anadol in 2022 and 2023, and Sofia Crespo in 2024. In 2022, an NFT (non-fungible token) work of Anadol’s mapping “Living Architecture: Casa Batlló” sold at Christie’s for $1.38mn. Regular annual projects are planned.Iconic murals and graffiti are to millennials what the blue plaque was to boomers The scale and prominence of a house is increasingly alluring for artists as the popularity of public art — and outdoor murals — grows. Banksy, the pseudonymous icon of British graffiti who has been celebrating (or exploiting) buildings as canvases since the 1990s, “rarely paints on a private home, but when he does, he goes big. It is as though he has seen a ‘canvas’ so tempting he just can’t resist,” says Will Ellsworth-Jones, author of Banksy’s Lost Works, a new survey of the artist’s works that have been destroyed or removed. Banksy’s work presents a curious conundrum for the art world: “First, the wall of a house is an enormous piece of art for anyone to want to buy,” says Ellsworth-Jones. “Second, Banksy will not authenticate it, because he thinks his pieces should stay in context, where he painted them.” The latter speaks to the power of a house as a canvas — in situ. Out of context, what are they? “The two biggest walls which have been taken down, a ‘battered wife’ in Margate and a ‘hungry seagull’ in Lowestoft, are still for sale,” says Ellsworth-Jones — “the Margate piece [“Valentine’s Day Mascara”] for an ambitious £6mn and Lowestoft with an asking price of £3.5mn.”Paintings on properties are often caught in a push-pull between capitalism and altruism, but “a well-placed, well-loved mural can shift perceptions of an entire neighbourhood”, says Lee Bofkin, chief executive of advertising agency Global Street Art, which organises the London Mural Festival. The event launched in 2020 and this September presents some 100 artworks on buildings across the city. “The main challenge is getting buy-in from the people who live there. If the landlords aren’t on board, it’s a non-starter. And even if the landlords are on board in principle, they still need to be comfortable with the artist and artwork.”Often, there are more stakeholders, such as residents’ associations and local councils. “The overall level of consultation can vary widely,” says Bofkin. “But trusted local champions can streamline the process.” Councils and housing associations are increasingly open to murals as a way of shifting perceptions of neighbourhoods, Bofkin notes. In west London, a street art initiative called Acton Unframed is turning the walls of homes into features that foster social and commercial regeneration. One such is a bold, geometric piece created by abstract painter Remi Rough on a block of flats at the end of Goldsmith Avenue. “We often see people taking selfies, pictures or just looking at it,” says Fidel Angueira, a resident. “It is a dynamic splash of colour in the community.” The avenue was recently chosen by a national newspaper as one of the 50 best streets to live on in Britain. On the other side of London, the Hackney Peace Carnival Mural on Dalston Lane celebrates 40 years. Designed by muralist Ray Walker in 1983, and unveiled in 1985, the artwork features Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela marching for peace alongside local workers and landmarks. Restored around a decade ago, it celebrates the Greater London Council’s (GLC) Peace Year and was funded by Hackney Council, the GLC and Tony Banks MP. Like many long-standing, much-loved public murals, its message is one of unity and togetherness. “Iconic murals and graffiti are to millennials what the blue plaque was to boomers,” says Becky Fatemi, executive partner at Sotheby’s International Realty. They add cultural kudos and value, symbols of not just the artistic vibrancy of a community, but its street level, publicly shared beating heart. Many murals such as this are preserved and protected. But many aren’t. In Berlin — that lodestar of graffiti — works can disappear overnight. But the erasure of an artwork can be an expression in itself. Ellsworth-Jones notes that Banksy is uncertain whether his art is “the graffiti or the events that unfold around it”.Last year, The Banksy Museum opened in New York, the city where murals have long become a celebrated part of the urban landscape. Other British street artists are also generating buzz: Stik has created several monumental works, the most high profile of which was “Migrant”, a figure standing seven stories tall on the corner of Allen and Delancey Streets on an apartment block on the Lower East Side; a collaboration with the city’s Tenement Museum — now since painted over. Conversely, London-based French artist Camille Walala’s 40-metre-high graphic mural, titled “Pop City”, on an early 20th-century building in Brooklyn, was commissioned for the 2018 NYC Design festival — and has stayed. For developers, murals can be a way of engaging community support for a project. US company WXLLSPACE connects organisations, communities and property developers with mural artists. In Queens, it orchestrated the transformation of the side of an apartment block in Rego Park into “Lionheart”, a vast mural by Sonny “Sundancer” Behan. The work was the result of a partnership with the non-profit housing developer Westhab. In London, as part of the 8-acre Camden Goods Yard development, adjacent to Camden Market — a project that will bring 644 new homes to the area — St George (part of Berkeley Group) commissioned a mural by Mr Doodle, an artist known for his “graffiti spaghetti” style, for the Regent’s Park Road footbridge. The 2024 mural — a composition of doodled characters, objects and patterns — was completed in partnership with Camden Council and Network Rail. “This new mural will bring joy to the residents of Camden Goods Yard and all who pass the bridge each day,” says Marcus Blake, managing director of St George. Joy is often the MO. Another figure who embraced the creative potential of walls was Tove Jansson, the Finnish creator of the Moomins. A new exhibition, In Tove Jansson: Paradise, currently showing at Helsinki Art Museum, brings the artist’s fantastical murals to the fore. A 1934 snapshot of 19-year-old Jansson pictures her painting a mural on the outside of her uncle’s apartment in Velbert, West Germany. In a letter to a friend, the artist describes how she added details according to the wishes of family members: “If they want a parrot, voilà, they get a parrot. If they ask for a pond, or a rosebush — ha! I conjure it all like magic!” The mural’s fate is unknown. It might have been demolished or painted over, or perhaps someone in Velbert enjoys their breakfast under a forgotten 20th-century masterpiece. Artworks on buildings are tantalising, ephemeral. Gautier at Casa Batlló suggests that the transient quality of digital mappings only adds to their mystique. But a more permanent work that resonates will be embraced and protected, says Bofkin. “That is what makes murals on residential buildings special: they are not just for the city; they are for the people who wake up and see them every day.”Find out about our latest stories first — follow @ft_houseandhome on Instagram
