LUMA Arles isn’t just an art center – it’s a living prototype for how culture can activate ecological and social transformation through collaboration, as you’ll hear in this captivating DLD Future Hub session with Maja Hoffmann, founder and president of the LUMA Foundation; Vassilis Oikonomopoulos, Director of Exhibitions and Programs at LUMA; and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries in London.
LUMA can best be understood as a network of interconnected projects that prototype sustainable futures, Obrist points out. One example is the MIT Luma Lab, created in 2024 to address climate challenges in the Mediterranean region.
In Arles, local natural waste – like salt, rice husks, and sunflower byproducts – form the basis of construction materials, for example in a café designed by Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija.
“He used a number of materials that have never been used before for architectural design”, Vassilis Oikonomopoulos says. “Particularly, sunflower and rice husks for the construction of walls, but also dyes and pigments from plants and flowers from the local environment for the creation of tapestries.”
The pioneering work is also changing LUMA itself. “Up to now, our center was non-profit”, Maja Hoffmann says, but the foundation see “so many people who want to use our products that we are going to get revenues from it to continue to invest into research.”
Watch the video to learn more about the LUMA Foundation and its special place at the intersection of art, ecology, and sustainability.
