Free-access spaces

Inside The Tower

The Tower is the iconic gateway to the Parc des Ateliers. Open to all without a ticket, it features permanent spaces and artworks to discover as you move through its different levels.

Inside, you will find:

Ground level

• Two video pods: two videos by Maja Hoffmann and Frank Gehry introducing the LUMA Arles project.

• Drum Café: A café conceived as a work of art by Rirkrit Tiravanija and Atelier LUMA.

  Learn more about the Drum Café
  
  

  One of the key artists in the history of relational aesthetics, Tiravanija has designed and created one of the bars, located on the ground floor area of The Tower designed by Frank Gehry. The bar is designed as a lived-in artwork and includes the use of a huge array of material. Walls in stainless steel with exposed pipes and panels made from sunflower marrow: this restaurant and bar transforms the notion of hospitality with its very strong visual identity. Conviviality and sharing lies at the heart of Tiravanija’s practice and the bar and restaurant inevitably becomes one of the crucial representations of time spent with others.
  
  The design is utilizing materials of the bioregion of the Camargue and natural resources, such as sunflower pulp, local wool, natural pigments and fabric dyes. A 10-metre long monumental tapestry created with artisans in Aubusson factory, central France, is the landmark of the space. It was made over many years and has used unique tapestry techniques and materials, in collaboration with designers and researchers from the labs of Atelier LUMA.

   

Level 1

• Dans la forêt : a monumental ceramic wall mural by Etel Adnan.

  Learn more about the mural
  
  

  Etel Adnan has created a unique artwork in the medium of ceramic wall mural covering the entire back wall of the auditorium at LUMA Arles. The mural is based on four of her drawings that represent the movement of trees in the wind, made in her trademark vibrant colours of orange, yellow, green and blue. These colours are characteristic of her late work using marker pen on paper.
  
  Once the drawings were created, they have been reproduced in fired ceramic tiles and enlarged to cover a wall measuring approximately 14 metres in length and 4 metres in height. The drawings are specifically made for Arles and relate to both the impression of the wind in the South and to paintings of Van Gogh, who was also inspired by movement in nature, something he extensively represented throughout his life and work.

   

• First panoramic terrace: offering views over the landscaped park and the skate park.

Level 2

• Isometric Slides: two 12-meter-high slides created by Carsten Höller.

  Learn more about the slides
  
  

  Carsten Höller has installed a new iteration of Slides, an experimental project he has been producing in different locations for a number of years. The artist is taking advantage of the height of the space to expand on the hypothesis he has been investigating for some time concerning the possible effects of sliding. His work, playful and evocative, questions what would be the effect and result of sliding if it was part of the daily routine. It asks whether slides, which are mostly associated with playgrounds, can become part of our experiential and architectural life. He has noted that "A slide is a sculpture that you can travel inside".
  
  However, it would be a mistake to think that you have to use the slide to make sense of it. From an architectural and practical perspective, the slides are one of the building’s means of transporting people, equivalent to the escalators, lifts or stairs. Slides deliver people quickly, safely and elegantly to their destinations, they’re inexpensive to construct and energy-efficient. They’re also a device for experiencing an emotional state that is a unique condition, somewhere between delight and madness. It was described in the fifties by the French writer Roger Caillois as "a kind of voluptuous panic upon an otherwise lucid mind."

• Take Your Time: a large circular mirror by Ólafur Elíasson, installed at the top of the double-helix staircase.

  Learn more about the mirror
  
  

  Take your Time is a large circular mirror fixed to the ceiling at an angle. The mirror rotates slowly on its axis, which creates a whirling sensation, destabilizing the viewer’s perception of space. The artwork is installed above the monumental, double-helix staircase, a position which adds a playful albeit disorienting effect as one arrives at its highest point. Engaging with the viewer’s movement, but also with light, reflection, and the elements of architecture and surrounding space, this work offers an enchanting experience. It is a new interpretation specifically created for the site of LUMA Arles.

• Laguna Gloria: an immersive soundscape by Liam Gillick.

  Learn more about the work
  
  

  Liam Gillick has designed the communal area in level 2 of The Tower. Using film stills from his 2013 film Margin Time 2 (The Heavenly Lagoon), he has created an audio-visual landscape and a space which will be used for multiple activities. The film stills present grainy images of plants and natural environments and the idea is to create a room that resembles an artificial garden. Playing with the idea of nature as a given, and space as an agent in the production of realities, the installation becomes an inverted pavilion, centrally located within The Tower where the public and audiences can rest or transit. The notion of impermanence and artificiality are the key components of the work, which is a system of images and sounds that is made to evoke a both distant and close relationship to nature.

Level 3

• The Library is on Fire: an experimental library, a unique space for research and reading

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  A creature is looking for the form of its intelligence. Since 2011 an experimental library elaborates itself through readings of its volumes: books, films, video games, discs. It detects in them the movements, operations and structures that eventually compose the logics of its progression. As in a mysterious poem, you enter the possibility of a world where everything becomes suspense, refraction of signs, thought images, virtual source of attention.

   

Levels 7 to 9

• Day Light Songs (biting the air): a work between painting and stained glass by Helen Marten, integrated into the stairwell

  Learn more about the work
  
  

  Day Light Songs (biting the air) is a site-specific installation for three of the publicly accessible and daily used sections of the security staircase of The Tower. Comprising layered glass works and aluminium frames, it is occupying 3 double-sided apertures. Day Light Songs (biting the air) is neither painting nor stained-glass window, but a hybrid of the two. Produced as acts of literal liquid alchemy, the process included multiple ancient and contemporary techniques, such as, acid etching, fusing, enamelling, sand blasting, silver staining, silk screening and hand painting.
  
  The profile of a child’s head dominates, sitting both centrally and at rising or sinking points around the aluminium frames. Within the silhouette is the word ‘mama’. The child’s central head becomes part of an alphabet, a shape that might be representative of a series of spoken sounds, or single letters from which a set of actions can unfold. These views shift, depending on whether the viewer is climbing or descending the doubled-sided staircase. A series of graphic vector forms, interposed between several sets of fences can just as equally be signs or diagrams or they can be portraits. Suspended, this morphing system of vantage points and characters, mixes with the textures of glass and milled metal details to add more units of measure, each relentlessly collaged into one another. This series of hybrid forms is deviced to morph and flex with incoming light. It becomes a quiet parable of the exponential powers of the universe to shrink and expand before us, a complex mathematical equation of many interconnected pieces.

   

Levels 7 to 9

• Panoramic terraces: a unique view over Arles, the Camargue, and the Alpilles

• Open Space: a space conceived as an extension of the street, by Konstantin Grcic

  Learn more about this space
  
  

  This unique space for multipurpose usage, devised as an extension of the street, was designed by German industrial designer Konstantin Grcic, renowned for his radical and minimalist interpretations of everyday objects.
  
  The two floors - 8th is an interior space and 9th is leading to the Viewing Terrace - are conceptually connected and the design follows seamlessly between the two. Grcic has created a theatrical space, using metal curtains and special lights to subdivide areas.
  
  Reflecting on a street-like concept, the designer has created spaces that are raw but hospitable with a sensitivity to the industrial nature of the building and its metal surfaces. The two floors benefit of the most commanding views extending towards the Camargue and the Alpilles, taking in the entire city of Arles, and offering perspectives never seen before of the historical city, the surrounding nature, and the landscape.

Practical tips to make the most of your visit:

• Pick up a free site map at the information desk—it will help you find your way around the Parc des Ateliers.
  
  
• If you’re visiting with children, a free activity booklet is available on Level 0 of The Tower. Don’t forget a pencil.
  
  
• Download the LUMA Arles app—it's free and offers guided tours to enrich your visit.