The movie theater has not said its last word. In cities of less than 50,000 inhabitants, where 800 new screens opened between 2019 and 2020 (source CNC), it is even booming, and a new generation of equipment has emerged, dapper and welcoming, which back to back the mono-screens with threadbare seats and the soulless multiplexes of shopping centers.
In 2021, we will no longer build a cinema as a signposted route from the cash register to the confectionery stand, to the theater and to the exit. You have to make people want, offer an experience that justifies not staying at home glued to your screens. This begins with the multiplication of the offer. In a city of 20,000 people that was once content with a small complex of two or three theaters, the standard is now six to nine screens.
The stake, for the owners of rooms, is to make the space function differently, to make of it places of life
The multiprogramming helping, they must be able to function at full capacity on Friday evening, at the peak of the activity. During the day, on the other hand – especially during the week – the spectators can be counted on the fingers of one hand. But it doesn’t matter that the copies are digital and that we no longer have a projectionist to pay. The stake, for the owners of rooms, consists in making the space work differently, like a café, a coworking space, a place to have birthday parties … To make them places of life, in short, susceptible , while we are at it, to participate in the revitalization of city hearts at half mast. This is where architecture comes in.
In recent months, we have seen a whole crop of projects flourish, carried out not by specialists accustomed to applying strictly calibrated specifications, but by general architects who arrived with a fresh outlook. Cinemas whose activity, constrained by successive confinements, did not really start until June, which play the card of pleasure, and even prestige.
Magic lantern
In Cahors, the Grand Palais can be seen from afar. A double volume both discreet and classy which takes up the template of the buildings of the old barracks in which it fits: one part is clad in light beige bricks that recall the colors of the city, the other in gilded aluminum . Inside, seven cinemas, a café and the Resistance Museum, which is in the process of relocating there. On the beautiful square surrounded by the old buildings and the new, the terrace unfolds harmoniously, skateboarders snap their boards, strollers take over the oasis, a surprising green space surrounded by a trellis of climbing plants which are cooled by misters. At night, the voids pierced here and there in the facade let light filter through from inside, and the building takes on the air of a magic lantern.
You have 68.97% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.