Symbolizing the creation of a creative campus, the Luma Tower will be inaugurated in June. An impressive architectural work that is part of a larger project dedicated to contemporary art.

The Luma creative campus opens its doors in June

The project to create the Luma creative campus in Arles, led by Maja Hoffmann, co-owner of the Roche pharmaceutical laboratories, is about to be completed. It will be able to open its doors and welcome the public as of June, on the 26th exactly. More than five years of work will have been necessary to give life to a vast park of more than 11 hectares dedicated to contemporary art in all its forms: paintings, sculptures, photographs, installations of all kinds.

Maja Hoffmann, a great art collector and patron of the arts, wanted to create a space to welcome artists from all over the world, an “activator of the artistic, cultural, ecological, social and economic fabric of Arles and the Camargue” as she declared. More than 150 million euros have been invested, via private funds, to rehabilitate and transform former SNCF warehouses, renamed the Parc des Ateliers.

The Luma creative campus even aims to become a European capital of contemporary art, like Bilbao and its famous Guggenheim Museum, named after one of the world’s greatest art patrons, Peggy Guggenheim. Maja Hoffmann does not hide her desire to draw inspiration from the Bilbao site, whose architecture is a work of art in itself. It is with this in mind that one of the world’s leading architects, Franck Gehry, has taken part in the project.

A tower with incredible architecture

The famous architect Franck Gehry has applied his unparalleled style to the design of the Tour Luma, the highlight of the creative campus. The author of several flagship projects around the world, including the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, has designed and imagined a tower whose distorted facade leaves you breathless with its 11,000 metal panels covering it. The architect said, “We wanted to evoke the local roots from Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ to the emergence of the Alpilles with a rotunda that echoes the Roman arena.

Some see in the architecture of the Luma Tower similarities with the creations of Gaudi, known worldwide for the famous Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. But more than a totem, the Luma Tower, which climbs to more than 56 meters in height over nine floors, will serve a very specific purpose. Exhibitions will be held there and several spaces dedicated to seminars and a large library are integrated into the project.

And to top it all off, the public will also be able to enjoy a huge green park that will provide a very pleasant green setting for this architectural complex dedicated to contemporary art.