LUMA Arles presents Climates of Landscape: Bas Smets

ARLES.- Bas Smets is a globally recognized landscape architect whose practice redefines what is possible in the face of climate change. Climates of Landscape is his first exhibition at LUMA Arles that brings together landscape architecture, design and ecological thinking to demonstrate how urban ecologies can be conceived and constructed. The exhibition explores the way to rethink ecosystems and our relationship to the environment. For Smets, a city can be understood as an aggregation of artificial climates. Buildings alter wind patterns and modulate sunlight exposure, while streetscapes modify runoff water and affect soil permeability. Landscape architecture can create microclimates with intention, treating the city as a living laboratory. Informed by the detailed study of how plants and other organisms transform their environments over time, landscape design introduces vegetation into an urban fabric as the agent of change and transformation. Through carefully constructed landscapes, new climates can emerge, making the built environment more resilient in the face of the steadily growing crisis of general climatic conditions.

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