Location: Bayonne, France.

Architect: Farid Azib.

The Atalante art house cinema in Bayonne has been managed by the Cinéma & Cultures association since 1990. To carry out the project, two cinemas had to be grouped together and refurbished. The city, the CNC, and the general and regional councils were the main partners in the project. The challenge was to bring together the historical character of the site with an explicit request to set this cultural space in a strong contemporaneity. Emmanuel Kant argued that space and time are the framework within which the mind is forced to build its experience of reality. The Seventh Art is a breakthrough on the real and the imaginary, with frames exposed to the south-west allowing the light on each side to pass through. The facade is made up of large amplified windows, mismatched and matched in size, to give passers-by a glimpse of scenes, movements, silhouettes, lights, life and collective activity. The facade is made up of prismatic projecting vo-lumes, created with light prefabricated elements, while the rear facade uses the same device, but in a lighter, more abbreviated way, like a short film. Sylvie Larroque, co-di-rector of L’Atalante, said that there is a real interaction between the outside and the inside with its screen-like windows. The Atalante team was keen to create a place that was lively, with a wooden mesh system between the cinema reception area and the bar-res-taurant area. To protect the neighbourhood and the two new flats, in-depth consultation with the acoustician was essential. The transversal bar-restaurant forms the link between the existing transformed spaces and the extension. It consists of a long wooden ceiling with an oak floor from the original building.

Photo credit: Luc Boegly.