The Luma Foundation has announced that its anticipated creative campus in the historic French city of Arles will open on 26 June 2021 (Covid-19 regulations allowing), featuring a striking central tower designed by Frank Gehry.
Located at the Parc des Ateliers, the 27-acre campus is the brainchild of Swiss art maverick Maja Hoffmann, who established the Luma Foundation in 2004. Since, she has masterminded a network of creative projects in the city, collaborating with a roll call of renowned creative figures – like artist Jorge Pardo on hotel and artist residence l’Arlatan, for instance, and Selldorf Architects on the conversion of four of the campus’ former railway factories into arts spaces. Tom Eccles, Liam Gillick, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Philippe Parreno, and Beatrix Ruf are all named as advisors on the project, which has been ongoing since 2008. The work of more than 100 artists and innovators has already been presented across the city over the last decade, but this summer marks the campus’ official opening.
The unquestioned centrepiece of Luma Arles – Gehry’s twisting, geometric tower – is finished with 11,000 stainless steel panels, and boasts the American architect’s singular vision for creating otherworldly, gravity-defying structures. The 15,000 sq m space will be home to exhibition galleries, project spaces and the foundation’s research and archive facilities, alongside workshop and seminar rooms. Gehry quotes Van Gogh’s Starry Night, the ‘soaring rock clusters you find in the region’, and ‘the plan of the Roman amphitheatre’ as inspirations for the building’s design. Landscape architect Bas Smets has lent his eye to the surrounding gardens and public park.
Arles has long been a cultural hotspot. It’s a haven for painters chasing the Provencal sunlight on fields of lavender, sunflowers and the Côte d’Azur, while the city’s summer photography festival, Les Rencontres d’Arles, brings more than 100,000 visitors in a typical year. Hoffman’s campus promises to attract a new and global audience, with Luma Arles set to be a collaborative space for ‘artists and innovators of the future’. ‘There is one driving metaphor for Luma at the Parc des Ateliers: that of a living organism,’ says Hoffman. ‘As such the balance between form and function determines its viability. It is about composing a polyphonic score where everything is ordered, yet where everything is possible.’ §