Frank Gehry’s Luma Arles Tower – An Architectural Masterpiece

Frank Gehry designed this architectural masterpiece, which is nearing the conclusion, at the South of France. Made with more than 11 thousand reflective steel panels, Luma Arles Tower presents a remarkable facade intended to evoke Van Gogh’s The Starry Night.

The modern building, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry, opened its doors on June 26, and it’s now the center of Maja Hoffman’s 27-acre art and culture complex, housing seminar rooms, exhibition spaces, research facilities, an auditorium, and a cafe space.

[BDCK category=3 Keywords=”BL-art issue, BL-ebook”][/BDCK]

Built atop of the remnants of a 19th-century rail yard, owned by French national railway company SNCF that was left vacant in 1986. The form of the base was informed by Arles’s Roman amphitheatre and its upper levels recall painter Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night, which he painted in 1889 while at the nearby Saint-Paul-de-Mausole lunatic asylum.

We wanted to evoke the local, from Van Gogh’s Starry Night to the soaring rock clusters you find in the region. Its central drum echoes the plan of the Roman amphitheatre.

FRANK GEHRY

Financed by a €150 million donation from Hoffmann, the Luma Arles arts center, the final piece of the 27-acre campus already features a series of industrial buildings transformed by Selldorf Architects.

Frank Gehry is one of the world’s most famous architects, with the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles on his list of leading architectural creations, and now adding Luma Arles Tower, a striking masterpiece!