Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Spring has come early in Barcelona. Perched on a balcony overlooking Passeig de Gr\u00e0cia, I watch as Casa Batll\u00f3, Gaud\u00ed\u2019s 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 \u201cArborescent\u201d \u2014 which he describes as a \u201cdigital tribute to nature\u201d \u2014 on to the facade. It\u2019s an artwork on an artwork that was once a family home. \u201cI wanted to use the facade as a gate to somewhere else,\u201d says Quayola. The 10-minute projection features various tree species spread across Gaud\u00ed\u2019s skeletal framework of stone balconies and mosaics, to a pounding soundtrack. Waves of smartphones sparkle on the street below.\u00a0\u00a0A 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.\u00a0In Barcelona, the Batll\u00f3s 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 \u2014 and tourist attraction drawing more than a million visitors a year. \u201cLiving at Casa Batll\u00f3 is noisy,\u201d acknowledges Gary Gautier, chief executive of the cultural institution. \u201cYou\u2019re going through a gate with a flood of people. It\u2019s not comfortable to live in a place that has become a museum or a monument.\u201d\u00a0Gautier says that since the museum\u2019s most recent renovations, which began in 2018, it has collaborated with artists from different disciplines, both popular and avant-garde, who \u201cshare Gaud\u00ed\u2019s innovative, humanistic and visionary mindset\u201d 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\u2019s mapping \u201cLiving Architecture: Casa Batll\u00f3\u201d sold at Christie\u2019s 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 \u2014 and outdoor murals \u2014 grows. Banksy, the pseudonymous icon of British graffiti who has been celebrating (or exploiting) buildings as canvases since the 1990s, \u201crarely paints on a private home, but when he does, he goes big. It is as though he has seen a \u2018canvas\u2019 so tempting he just can\u2019t resist,\u201d says Will Ellsworth-Jones, author of Banksy\u2019s Lost Works, a new survey of the artist\u2019s works that have been destroyed or removed.\u00a0Banksy\u2019s work presents a curious conundrum for the art world: \u201cFirst, the wall of a house is an enormous piece of art for anyone to want to buy,\u201d says Ellsworth-Jones. \u201cSecond, Banksy will not authenticate it, because he thinks his pieces should stay in context, where he painted them.\u201d The latter speaks to the power of a house as a canvas \u2014 in situ. Out of context, what are they? \u201cThe two biggest walls which have been taken down, a \u2018battered wife\u2019 in Margate and a \u2018hungry seagull\u2019 in Lowestoft, are still for sale,\u201d says Ellsworth-Jones \u2014 \u201cthe Margate piece [\u201cValentine\u2019s Day Mascara\u201d] for an ambitious \u00a36mn and Lowestoft with an asking price of \u00a33.5mn.\u201dPaintings on properties are often caught in a push-pull between capitalism and altruism, but \u201ca well-placed, well-loved mural can shift perceptions of an entire neighbourhood\u201d, 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. \u201cThe main challenge is getting buy-in from the people who live there. If the landlords aren\u2019t on board, it\u2019s a non-starter. And even if the landlords are on board in principle, they still need to be comfortable with the artist and artwork.\u201dOften, there are more stakeholders, such as residents\u2019 associations and local councils. \u201cThe overall level of consultation can vary widely,\u201d says Bofkin. \u201cBut trusted local champions can streamline the process.\u201d Councils and housing associations are increasingly open to murals as a way of shifting perceptions of neighbourhoods, Bofkin notes.\u00a0In 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. \u201cWe often see people taking selfies, pictures or just looking at it,\u201d says Fidel Angueira, a resident. \u201cIt is a dynamic splash of colour in the community.\u201d The avenue was recently chosen by a national newspaper as one of the 50 best streets to live on in Britain.\u00a0On 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\u2019s (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.\u00a0\u201cIconic murals and graffiti are to millennials what the blue plaque was to boomers,\u201d says Becky Fatemi, executive partner at Sotheby\u2019s 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.\u00a0Many murals such as this are preserved and protected. But many aren\u2019t. In Berlin \u2014 that lodestar of graffiti \u2014 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 \u201cthe graffiti or the events that unfold around it\u201d.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 \u201cMigrant\u201d, 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\u2019s Tenement Museum \u2014 now since painted over. Conversely, London-based French artist Camille Walala\u2019s 40-metre-high graphic mural, titled \u201cPop City\u201d, on an early 20th-century building in Brooklyn, was commissioned for the 2018 NYC Design festival \u2014 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 \u201cLionheart\u201d, a vast mural by Sonny \u201cSundancer\u201d Behan. The work was the result of a partnership with the non-profit housing developer Westhab.\u00a0In London, as part of the 8-acre Camden Goods Yard development, adjacent to Camden Market \u2014 a project that will bring 644 new homes to the area \u2014 St George (part of Berkeley Group) commissioned a mural by Mr Doodle, an artist known for his \u201cgraffiti spaghetti\u201d style, for the Regent\u2019s Park Road footbridge. The 2024 mural \u2014 a composition of doodled characters, objects and patterns \u2014 was completed in partnership with Camden Council and Network Rail. \u201cThis new mural will bring joy to the residents of Camden Goods Yard and all who pass the bridge each day,\u201d says Marcus Blake, managing director of St George.\u00a0Joy 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\u2019s fantastical murals to the fore. A 1934 snapshot of 19-year-old Jansson pictures her painting a mural on the outside of her uncle\u2019s 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: \u201cIf they want a parrot, voil\u00e0, they get a parrot. If they ask for a pond, or a rosebush \u2014 ha! I conjure it all like magic!\u201d\u00a0The mural\u2019s 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.\u00a0Artworks on buildings are tantalising, ephemeral. Gautier at Casa Batll\u00f3 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. \u201cThat 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.\u201dFind out about our latest stories first \u2014 follow @ft_houseandhome on Instagram<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Spring has come early in Barcelona. Perched on a balcony overlooking Passeig de Gr\u00e0cia, I watch as Casa Batll\u00f3, Gaud\u00ed\u2019s 1904 organic Art Nouveau masterpiece, comes alive with green shoots, bright blossoms and blooms. All digital, algorithmic, new growth. Quayola, an Italian contemporary artist<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":232350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-232349","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232349"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":232351,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232349\/revisions\/232351"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}