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Credits

Atelier LUMA, Martino Gamper, and local artisans designed the new restaurant at the Parc des Ateliers using local materials: banquettes made of merino wool dyed with invasive and dye plants, and walls made of rice straw.
© Adrian Deweerdt

Le Réfectoire

Once a workers’ canteen at the Parc des Ateliers, the building now houses Le Réfectoire, one of LUMA Arles’ restaurants.

Building renovation

An interior design by Martino Gamper, in collaboration with Atelier LUMA

Renovated in 2020 by Selldorf Architects, this historic hospital center has been redesigned to accommodate one of the restaurants in the Parc des Ateliers. The Italian designer Martino Gamper’s studio is responsible for the interior design and decoration as part of the “Tutti Frutti” project. During a residency at LUMA Arles, Gamper developed a range of custom-made furniture for the building and its terrace.

The design was made in close collaboration with Atelier LUMA and local collaborators, and the objects created were manufactured on site. The resulting pieces of furniture are richly rooted in the region and imbued with a strong artistic dimension.

Martino Gamper's London studio was invited to a residency in Arles in 2019 to gain a better understanding of the territory and its opportunities, and learn about Atelier LUMA's research.

"Many resources and materials have a lot of potential, but hadn't yet been used in an architectural con-text, so we prototyped an initial series of tables, benches, and stools, explains Martino Gamper, the studio's founder.

The prototypes were put to the test straight away at banquets organized by the studio. This highly convivial residency laid the foundations for a collaboration to decorate the new Le Réfectoire restaurant at the Parc des Ateliers: the Tutti Frutti project.

The studio designed a range of furniture that was prototyped at the Parc des Ateliers and produced either internally or with local col-laborators. In 2022, the studio reactivated Atelier LUMA's network of collaborators to co-develop a custom fabric for furniture to be shown at Milan Design Week. The collaboration was an opportunity to apply research findings about different qualities of wool yarn.

Martino Gamper

Martino Gamper is an Italian designer based in London. A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, where he studied sculpture with Michelangelo Pistoletto, he collaborates on a wide range of projects from exhibition design to interior design, from one-off commissions to mass-produced products for leading furniture design brands.

"Design is interesting when it's a dialogue"

Martino Gamper looks back on his residence at Atelier LUMA. For five months, Atelier LUMA, Martino Gamper’s studio and local craftspeople worked together to imagine and design the new restaurant in the Parc des Ateliers with materials developed from local resources and know-how.