The LUMA Tower is a building designed by Frank Gehry for the LUMA Arles arts center in Arles, France, commissioned by arts patron Maja Hoffmann, founder of the LUMA Foundation. [1] [2] It was inaugurated on July 4, 2021. [3] [4] [5] [6]
About the outlook of the tower Gehry wrote: "We wanted to evoke the local, from Vincent van Gogh's painting Starry Night to the soaring rock clusters you find in the Camargue region. Its central drum echoes the circular plan of the Roman amphitheatre". [4]
The building is 56 meters tall and has 12 floors (10 stories). It sits on a rotunda, "the Drum" of 54 metres in diameter and height 16 to 18 meters. The interior surface area is 15,000 sq.m., of which 2,000 sq.m. is dedicated for exhibitions and 1,4000 sq.m. for other purposes. [4] It is covered with 11,000 angled reflective stainless steel panels. [7]
The building includes exhibition spaces, workshops, a library, an auditorium with 150 seats, and a café. [4] [7]
The first project for LUMA Arles was presented by Maja Hoffmann and Frank Gehry in July 2008 to the city of Arles. It was rejected for being too tall. Only the third attempt was accepted in December 2012. Construction started in 2014. [2]
Frank Owen Gehry is a Canadian-born American architect and designer. A number of his buildings, including his private residence in Santa Monica, California, have become world-renowned attractions.
Arles is a coastal city and commune in the South of France, a subprefecture in the Bouches-du-Rhône department of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, in the former province of Provence.
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a museum of modern and contemporary art in Bilbao (Biscay), Spain. It is one of several museums affiliated to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and features permanent and visiting exhibits of works by Spanish and international artists. It was inaugurated on 18 October 1997 by King Juan Carlos I of Spain, with an exhibition of 250 contemporary works of art. It is one of the largest museums in Spain.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is a nonprofit organization founded in 1937 by philanthropist Solomon R. Guggenheim and his long-time art advisor, artist Hilla von Rebay. The foundation is a leading institution for the collection, preservation, and research of modern and contemporary art and operates several museums around the world. The first museum established by the foundation was The Museum of Non-Objective Painting, in New York City. This became The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1952, and the foundation moved the collection into its first permanent museum building, in New York City, in 1959. The foundation next opened the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy, in 1980. Its international network of museums expanded in 1997 to include the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Bilbao, Spain, and it expects to open a new museum, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates after its construction is completed.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at Eakins Oval. The museum administers collections containing over 240,000 objects including major holdings of European, American and Asian origin. The various classes of artwork include sculpture, paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, armor, and decorative arts.
4 Times Square is a 48-story skyscraper at Times Square in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Located at 1472 Broadway, between 42nd and 43rd Streets, the building measures 809 ft (247 m) tall to its roof and 1,118 ft (341 m) tall to its antenna. The building was designed by Fox & Fowle and developed by the Durst Organization. 4 Times Square, and the Bank of America Tower to the east, occupy an entire city block.
Contemporary architecture is the architecture of the 21st century. No single style is dominant. Contemporary architects work in several different styles, from postmodernism, high-tech architecture and new references and interpretations of traditional architecture to highly conceptual forms and designs, resembling sculpture on an enormous scale. Some of these styles and approaches make use of very advanced technology and modern building materials, such as tube structures which allow construction of buildings that are taller, lighter and stronger than those in the 20th century, while others prioritize the use of natural and ecological materials like stone, wood and lime. One technology that is common to all forms of contemporary architecture is the use of new techniques of computer-aided design, which allow buildings to be designed and modeled on computers in three dimensions, and constructed with more precision and speed.
Saadiyat Island is a natural island and a tourism-cultural environmentally friendly project for Emirati heritage and culture that is located in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The project is located in a large, low-lying island, 500 metres (1,600 ft) off the coast of Abu Dhabi island. A mixed commercial, residential, and leisure project is currently under construction on the island. When completed, Saadiyat Island is expected to become Abu Dhabi's cultural centre, mostly for the Island's Cultural District that is expected to include eight museums.
Philippe Parreno is a French contemporary artist, living and working in Paris. His works include films, installations, performances, drawings, and text.
The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is a planned art museum, to be located in Saadiyat Island cultural district in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Upon completion, it is planned to be the largest of the Guggenheim museums. Architect Frank Gehry designed the building. After announcing the museum project in 2006, work on the site began in 2011 but was soon suspended. A series of construction delays followed; the museum is expected to be completed in 2025.
La Vila Olímpica del Poblenou or La Villa Olímpica is a neighborhood in the Sant Martí district of Barcelona, Catalonia (Spain). It was constructed in the late 1980s and early 1990s for the 1992 Summer Olympic Games which took place in Barcelona. Its construction was devised by Oriol Bohigas, David Mackay, and Albert Puigdomènec as a residential area in the otherwise industrial and working-class district of Poblenou, which underwent regeneration but involved massive expropriation, as well as the destruction of a sizeable portion of the district, including Industrial Revolution factories of architectural value such as Fàbrica Foret. It follows essentially the reticular outline of Eixample and Poblenou, with about 2000 new apartments in the area, owned by the mixed public-private company VOSA.
8 Spruce Street, previously known as the Beekman Tower and New York by Gehry, is a residential skyscraper on Spruce Street in the Financial District of Manhattan is New York City. Designed by architect Frank Gehry + Gehry Partners LLP and developed by Forest City Ratner, the building rises 870 feet with 76 stories. WSP Cantor Seinuk was the lead structural engineer, Jaros, Baum & Bolles provided MEP engineering, and Kreisler Borg Florman was construction manager. 8 Spruce Street was the tallest residential tower in the Western Hemisphere at the time of opening in February 2011.
Cosentini Associates is an engineering firm that provides consulting engineering services for the building industry.
Maja Hoffmann is a Swiss billionaire, art collector, art patron, documentary producer, and businesswoman. She is the founder and president of the LUMA Foundation. She is also part of the shareholder pool made up of descendants of the founder of the Roche Holding AG, which controls the Swiss health-care company Hoffmann-La Roche.
LUMA Foundation is a nonprofit organization established in 2004 that is based out of Zurich, Switzerland. It supports the activities of independent contemporary artists and other pioneers working in the fields of art, photography, publishing, documentary, and multimedia.
Mirvish+Gehry, also known as Forma, is a planned two-tower mixed-use building complex in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The towers were designed by Frank Gehry in partnership with David Mirvish. The project is located on King Street West at Duncan Street in Toronto's Entertainment District.
11 Hoyt is a residential skyscraper in the Downtown Brooklyn neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York City. It was designed by architect Studio Gang with executive architect Hill West and developed by real estate conglomerate Tishman Speyer.
The year 2021 in architecture involved some significant architectural events and new buildings.
Luma Arles is an arts center in Arles, France created by the LUMA Foundation headed by Swiss arts patron Maja Hoffmann. It encompasses several renovated former railroad factories and the LUMA Tower, a 15,000 square meter tower building designed by the Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry for the LUMA Foundation. For the building Gehry took some of his inspiration from the Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh hoping to catch the light Dutch artist sought in the South of France, specifically as in Starry Night which was painted in Arles in 1889. The skin of the building features 11,000 angled reflective stainless steel panels.