Belgian landscape architect, Bas Smets, known for working where ecology, design and architecture intersect. Smets sees park and greenspaces as engines—systems that can bend heat, redirect wind, filter water, and carve out entirely new micro-climates. Exhibiting at Luma Arles, Smets’ Climates of Landscape, is a provocation to position landscape architecture not as decoration, but as a critically adaptive instrument shaping micro-climates within the urban fabric.
The exhibition brings this vision to life through three projects: the redesign of Notre-Dame’s forecourt in Paris, which reduces urban heat through planting and surface strategies; Antwerp’s Embankment Park, a riverside landscape doubling as climate shield; and the transformation of Arles’ Parc des Ateliers from a concrete wasteland into a lush ecosystem of 500 trees, 80,000 plants, and a pond linked to the historic Craponne canal.
Through the exhibition, visitors encounter the design logic behind these places—immersive models, plans, films, and even an herbarium featuring 140 of the park’s species. It’s both scientific and sensorial: a reminder that climate resilience can be designed, but it must also be felt.
Smets calls plants “intelligent agents,” collaborators in shaping tomorrow’s climates. His philosophy is urgent: “If we’re hot now, we’re experiencing the coolest summer of the future cycle.” Bas Smets’ Climates of Landscape, now on show at LUMA Arles until 2 November 2025.
