Location: Cahors, France.

Architect: Antonio Virga Architecte.

Antonio Virga has designed a 7-theater cinema in the historic center of Cahors, as part of a redevelopment plan for the pedestrianized Place Bessières. The cinema has a capacity of 1,051 spectators and is located on the site of a former army barracks. The project aimed to recreate and reinterpret the symmetry of the preexisting barracks, with the cinema occupying the area of the east wing that was destroyed by fire in 1943. The Place Bessières has been transformed into a broad and welcoming urban space, mostly paved in brick with a dense green area at the center called “the oasis”. The Museum of the Resistance, previously housed in a building on this site, will be located on the building’s top level with a separate entrance from the cinema. The monolithic volume of the cinema has awe-inspiring façades, with a machrabiya composed of little perforations that lighten the façade and intrigue from a distance. The building is divided into two distinct volumes: one built of brick and the other of perforated and gilded metal, each playing a precise role in relation to the public space. The brick volume mirrors the two buildings of the former barracks and is a contemporary reinterpretation of these structures. The cinema seeks to carry the architecture beyond the simple objective of recreating the morphology of the former barracks.

Photo credit: Luc Boegly.