Atelier LUMA
🌐Atelier LUMA operates as a biodesign lab in the Camargue region of southern France, connecting human and non-human elements through design interventions. The organization transforms undervalued local resources into valuable materials and products while maintaining a multidisciplinary team of approximately 20 people.
Bioregional Context
Located 45 kilometers from the Mediterranean Sea in southern France, the region sits between the sea and Camargue National Park. The area is characterized by its former industrial heritage, operating from a converted railway station that once housed industry.
Background
The Camargue region of southern France stretches between the Mediterranean Sea and Camargue National Park, a landscape shaped by both natural processes and industrial heritage. Atelier LUMA operates from a converted railway station in Arles, part of the Luma Arles cultural institute.
Origins and Network
Atelier LUMA functions as a biodesign lab where "bio" encompasses both human and non-human elements and how they live together. Their core principle guides their approach: materials are heavy and should stay local, while ideas and people are light and should be global. The organization emerged from Jan Boelen's work developing biolabs across Europe, including one in Ljubljana inspired by projects like the Santian Eco City Lab.
Atelier LUMA discovers undervalued resources in a region—heritage, science and technology, crafts, existing needs—and connect them through design processes. The organization maintains a multidisciplinary team of approximately 20 people—designers, biologists, engineers, and lab technicians—enabling work across disciplines from material research and development to prototyping and knowledge transmission.
Activities
Resource Transformation and Material Development
A central focus involves identifying and transforming undervalued resources into valuable products and materials. They work with Mérinos d'Arles sheep wool, exploring natural dyeing techniques and new applications that can reactivate industries and reconnect value chains while avoiding plastics. The organization examines how seeds can be made with rice—common in the Camargue—and explores the leftovers of olive pressing, extruding and mixing them with minerals to create chairs. They investigate salt—one of the most abundant materials in the world—exploring crystallization processes that only use wind and sun to produce wall applications in buildings, valuable for energy-efficient construction. Beyond material development, they create software and documentation for these age-old materials, showing how they can be used in different ways and shared with design communities.
Sustainable Building Demonstration
One of their most significant projects is the comprehensive renovation of a 2,000-square-meter industrial building on the Luma Arles site. Completed over three years in collaboration with two architectural teams, the project demonstrates sustainable construction principles. They developed 20 materials from the region within a 70-kilometer radius, using the building site itself as a key source. The building is connected by the materials with the landscape, but it's also an ecosystem in itself—collecting gray, green, and yellow water to irrigate gardens, with water filtered by algae used in their research programs.
Biofabric Places Network
The Biofabric Places Network is a collaborative system of material production hubs. The network enables different bioregions to learn from each other—materials "cooked" in similar ways but adapted to local contexts, from Middle Eastern deserts to European cities. Each time, they work together with industries, universities, and build local networks with cities and various partners to find cooperatives that can continue building and producing these materials locally. They're mainly focused on building materials, examining how waste streams in cities and larger regions can contribute to a healthier building industry.
Vision and Legacy
All this methodology is written down in their book, Atelier Luma: Bioregional Design Practices. This publication shares their approach to finding, connecting, implementing, and transmitting bioregional design knowledge with broader communities, demonstrating how locally-driven material innovations can scale while respecting bioregional specificity—enabling knowledge to flow globally while materials remain rooted in place.
Sources
| Type | Name | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Video | The Bioregional Conversations - Conversation 3 | ↗ |