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ARCHITECTURE

Poetry in motion: enter the world of France’s ‘scrap metal poet’

With its fairytale towers, quirky animated sculptures, fantastical constructions and musical fountains, the inventive world crafted out of discarded junk by the man known as the "Scrap Metal Poet" is tucked away deep in the northwestern French countryside.

Poetry in motion: enter the world of France's 'scrap metal poet'
Photo: AFP / Fred TANNEAU

“It's an extraordinary place in my imagination,” says its creator Robert Coudray, who has let his imagination run wild for nearly three decades, turning his ideas into reality.

With its fairytale towers, quirky animated sculptures, fantastical constructions and musical fountains, the inventive world crafted out of discarded junk by the man known as the “Scrap Metal Poet” is tucked away deep in the northwestern French countryside.

The sculptures sprung from the imagination of Robert Coudray, 65, who turned them into reality.

“It's an extraordinary place in my imagination,” says its creator Robert Coudray, who has let his imagination run wild for nearly three decades, turning his ideas into reality.

Now to the sounds of chiming bells and flowing water, visitors can wander around his little timeless world of scrap creations, peeking inside some of the 15 towers and admiring some 70 figures that move, laid out over a hectare (2.5 acres) of land in the village of Lizio.

Coudray says he started creating fantasy cabins one day when he was bored.


Coudray, 65, said it all began out of boredom.

“One day, I was bored so I started to make cabins, little cabins… and since I was bored, I made them bent,” says the sculptor, whose previous jobs ranged from stonemason to farmer.


Coudray scours junkyards for the main materials he uses for his sculpture, scrap metal and wood

Next he began creating sculptures and fountains that move and come alive.

To build them he scours junkyards for his main materials, scrap metal and wood, and lets his imagination soar in his workshop.

“I love everything which is not normal, everything that is quirky,” he says.

“I love everything which is not normal, everything that is quirky,” says Coudray.


And each year his world grows, for he says he's not done yet.

“I have a vision of where I want to go and that's going to take another 15 to 20 years,” he says.

Though located off the usual tourist route in Brittany, Coudray attracts around 35,000 visitors every year, both youngsters and those young at heart.

Around 35,000 people visit the “Universe of the Scrap Metal Poet” site each year.

As one visitor put it: “It's enchanting, it's as if we rediscover the spirit of childhood through all he has done.”

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ARCHITECTURE

Futuristic Gehry tower opens in World Heritage Arles

Rising high beyond an ancient Roman arena in Arles, a tall, twisted tower created by Frank Gehry shimmers in the sun, the latest futuristic addition to this southern French city known for its World Heritage sites.

Futuristic Gehry tower opens in World Heritage Arles
Gehry's Luma Tower opens in Arles, France. Photo: H I / Pixabay

The tower, which opens to the public on Saturday, is the flagship attraction of a new “creative campus” conceived by the Swiss Luma arts foundation that wants to offer artists a space to create, collaborate and showcase their work.

Gehry, the 92-year-old brain behind Bilbao’s Guggenheim museum and Los Angeles’ Walt Disney Concert Hall, wrapped 11,000 stainless steel panels around his tower above a huge glass round base.

It will house contemporary art exhibitions, a library, and offices, while the Luma Arles campus as a whole will host conferences and live performances.

From a distance, the structure reflects the changing lights of this town that inspired Van Gogh, capturing the whiteness of the limestone Alpilles mountain range nearby which glows a fierce orange when the sun sets.

Mustapha Bouhayati, the head of Luma Arles, says the town is no stranger to
imposing monuments; its ancient Roman arena and theatre have long drawn the
crowds.

The tower is just the latest addition, he says. “We’re building the heritage of tomorrow.”

Luma Arles spreads out over a huge former industrial wasteland.

Maja Hoffmann, a Swiss patron of the arts who created the foundation, says
the site took seven years to build and many more years to conceive.

Maja Hoffmann, founder and president of the Luma Foundation. Photo: Pascal GUYOT / AFP

Aside from the tower, Luma Arles also has exhibition and performance spaces in former industrial buildings, a phosphorescent skatepark created by South Korean artist Koo Jeong A and a sprawling public park conceived by Belgian landscape architect Bas Smets.

‘Arles chose me’

The wealthy great-granddaughter of a founder of Swiss drug giant Roche, Hoffmann has for years been involved in the world of contemporary art, like her grandmother before her.

A documentary producer and arts collector, she owns photos by Annie Leibovitz and Diane Arbus and says she hung out with Jean-Michel Basquiat in New York.

Her foundation’s stated aim is to promote artists and their work, with a special interest in environmental issues, human rights, education and culture.

She refuses to answer a question on how much the project in Arles cost. But as to why she chose the 53,000-strong town, Hoffmann responds: “I did not choose Arles, Arles chose me.”

She moved there as a baby when her father Luc Hoffmann, who co-founded WWF,
created a reserve to preserve the biodiversity of the Camargue, a region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Rhone river delta known for its pink flamingos.

The tower reflects that, with Camargue salt used as mural panels and the
delta’s algae as textile dye.

Hoffmann says she wants her project to attract more visitors in the winter, in a town where nearly a quarter of the population lives under the poverty line.

Some 190 people will be working at the Luma project over the summer, Bouhayati says, adding that Hoffman has created an “ecosystem for creation”.

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