Embellishing the Mediterranean road network
Key facts
Client: DIRMED (Direction Interdépartementale des Routes Méditerranée), State road authority
Location: Marseille and Aix-en-Provence
Year: 2025
Project type: Programme of four murals on road infrastructure
Scale: four walls, from 10 m² to 240 m² (surfaces detailed below)
Urban Art Up’s role: Artistic coordination — art direction, cultural production, worksite logistics, safety, technical support and operational management
DIRMED × Urban Art Up – Artistic programme on the Mediterranean road network
DIRMED (Direction Interdépartementale des Routes Méditerranée), the State service responsible for the maintenance, safety and development of the road network in south-eastern France, entrusted Urban Art Up with the artistic coordination of a large-scale visual enhancement programme.
The aim: to turn walls, technical sheds and road infrastructure into supports for artistic creation, mobilising professional artists from the graffiti and urban art scene.
The project combines art direction, cultural production, worksite logistics, safety, technical support and operational management, in order to guarantee a coherent, secure intervention adapted to the constraints of the motorway domain.
Wall 1 — A55 Marseille
Artist: FUEGO
Dimensions: 52 m²
Title: “Marseille est merveille”
FUEGO deploys striking lettering, legible at high speed. The dominant blue asserts legibility, while orange and white flames create strong visual momentum. A signage-like work that turns a motorway axis into an urban landmark.
Wall 2 — Mural RN296, Aix-en-Provence
Artists: Sock – Braga Last One – Nyota
Surface: 240 m²
The mural stages a giant robot facing an urban landscape partly overtaken by vegetation. At its centre, an abandoned car marks the passage of time, while a figure wearing a virtual-reality headset paints live, blending traditional practice and digital tools.
Together they create a visual narrative about the evolution of landscapes, the place of technology, and the way nature, architecture and urban culture reinvent themselves.
Wall 3 — Aix-Centre exit, RN2516
Artists: Nyota – Dire132 – Bonar – Tower – Braga Last One
Surface: 220 m²
The mural combines several graphic worlds: calligraphy, graffiti lettering, stylised landscapes and mechanical elements.
One meets a squirrel with a cybernetic air, a metallic insect and a monumental female figure inspired by robotic aesthetics.
The whole forms a composition in which the imaginary, the mechanical and the organic overlap, in continuous dialogue with the architecture of the site.
Wall 4 — Technical shed, A55 Marseille
Artist: MADDAM
Surface: 10 m²
MADDAM develops a visual language close to pop art: characters, geometric shapes, clean lines and flat areas of primary colours cover the shed entirely. The volume becomes a graphic architecture in which each face is an element of the composition.
A project co-built on the ground
This programme developed over time, wall after wall, thanks to the collaboration between Urban Art Up, DIRMED’s technical teams and the artists mobilised on site.
Acknowledgements:
Matthieu Canac, Head of the Marseille Urban District – DIRMED
David Idelovici, Head of CEI A55 – DIRMED
All the DIRMED teams, for their operational and technical support
The artists, for their commitment and perseverance on every worksite
This collective, itinerant and unifying project leaves a lasting mark on the territory, through a series of coherent, ambitious interventions adapted to the constraints of the road network.
Press article – La Provence
👉 “Autoroutes à Marseille : des œuvres pour limiter la profusion des tags et promouvoir les artistes locaux” (in French) — “Marseille motorways: artworks to curb the profusion of tags and promote local artists”
Read the La Provence article
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