Explore LUMA Arles’ park in a different way
Wander through LUMA Arles’ landscaped park with three audio tours designed by its creator, landscape architect Bas Smets.
How do you transform a huge, sterile concrete slab into a lush park?
Such was the challenge taken up by landscape architect Bas Smets when he turned the former industrial wasteland of the Parc des Ateliers into a landscaped park.
He invites you to explore the metamorphoses of this unique site through three audio tours.
Each tour begins at a different starting point in the park — The Arch, The Beach, or The South Entrance — and can be listened to in the order of your choice, from your smartphone.
A map of the park makes it easy for you to spot the routes of the three audio tours and to find your bearings.
To better embrace the narrative built by Bas Smets, the order 1-2-3 is suggested.
We recommend the use of headphones.
Audio Tour Starting Point #1
The Arch
"There was no soil, there was no water. There were no plants in that part. A park? Really? Here? "
Bas Smets
In 2009, Maja Hoffmann invited Bas Smets to visit the Parc des Ateliers, as he recounts in this extract.
Using the arch at the entrance of the Parc des Ateliers as his starting point, he looks back on the transformation of the site from a vast, sterile concrete slab — a former steam locomotive production site — into a living garden. From the only two hackberry trees on the site, he created a green tunnel, which has now become a symbolic passageway to the heart of the park.
Audio Tour Starting Point #2
The beach
"This is really, for me, the epicenter of the park, from which you can perfectly understand how it was created."
Bas Smets
In this audio tour, Bas Smets starts from what he now calls “the beach” — the former concrete heart of the Parc des Ateliers — to describe the broad outlines of his landscaped park project.
Inspired by the landscapes around Arles — the Alpilles, the Camargue, and the Crau — he designed a topography of dunes, planted 140 species of plants, and set up a hydraulic system, fed by the Craponne canal, to cool and irrigate the park.
Audio Tour Starting Point #3
The south entrance
"What we can do together with nature? How can we better understand the force of nature, the logic of nature, so that by giving it a little bit of a push, it can take over itself?"
Bas Smets
From the southern entrance to the Parc des Ateliers, Bas Smets recounts the history of the site's transformation in this audio recording.
He describes how children from Arles helped plant bulbs, how artworks were integrated into the landscape, and how an ecosystem capable of adapting to climate change started to emerge.
Since the park opened in 2021, nature has slowly been reclaiming its rights: trees are growing, the soil is becoming richer, and animal life is gradually returning.
The exhibition
Climates of Landscape
These audio tours of the landscaped park are designed as an extension of the exhibition Climates of Landscape presented at LUMA Arles in Le Magasin Électrique. Designed to be played while strolling through the park, they invite you to explore on site the ideas developed by Bas Smets in the exhibition.
In Paris, Antwerp, and Arles, Bas Smets’ projects—around Notre-Dame, along the Antwerp waterfront, and here in the landscaped park at LUMA Arles—reflect a solution-based approach grounded in scientific research in response to the challenges of the climate crises.
The Parc des Ateliers, part of LUMA Arles, plays a significant role in the exhibition. The transformation of this former industrial wasteland into a self-sustaining ecosystem–the largest climatic project of Bas Smets to date.
Installation view of the exhibition Climates of Landscapes.
The herbarium showcased here is composed exclusively of plants collected within the Parc des Ateliers. The majority originate from the 80,000 plants—spanning 140 different species—introduced between 2020 and 2021 during the park’s construction.
Bas Smets
Landscape architect
Bas Smets, born in 1975 in Belgium, is a landscape architect with a multidisciplinary background that has shaped his unique approach to creating innovative and sustainable urban spaces. He founded his firm in 2007 in Brussels which has since built over 50 international projects, including the LUMA Parc des Ateliers in Arles, the Thurn & Taxis Park in Brussels, the Sunken Garden in London, and the Himara Waterfront in Albania. In 2022, Smets won the prestigious international competition to redesign the public space surrounding Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris.
Smets' approach is characterized by his concept of "Augmented Landscapes," which utilizes natural processes to create new microclimates. He often collaborates with artists and scientists, reflecting his commitment to interdisciplinary innovation.
2023, Smets was appointed Professor in Practice at the Graduate School of Design of Harvard University, where he continues to explore inventive ways to transform urban environments into ecological systems capable of mitigating climate change. His visionary approach to landscape architecture offers a promising path forward for making cities more resilient to the challenges of the climate crisis.
