The campus, which reportedly cost US$175 million ($237 million) to build, is intended “to create a space that would help artists create and produce,” says Mustapha Bouhayati, the chief executive officer of Luma Arles. “It’s a multiplicity of buildings that offer diverse capacities and a diversity of conditions” in which artists can make art. Hoffmann will host yearly artists in residence.
Set within a former rail yard and factory area known as the Parc des Ateliers near the heart of Arles, the campus includes a group of industrial buildings that were renovated by architect Annabelle Selldorf, a 10-acre park designed by landscape architect Bas Smets, and, dwarfing everything else, a 11-level tower (two below ground, nine above) designed by “starchitect” Frank Gehry that covers roughly 160,000 sq ft.
“There wasn’t the space to go horizontal,” says Gehry, in an interview. “We made about 50 models of it — we had two towers at one point, because the program seemed to divide itself, but in the end all that got baked into one tower.”
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