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LEISURE Perforated cinema completes in Cahors


Antonio Virga Architecte has delivered, in the centre of Cahors, south west France, a brick and metal-clad cinema that forms part of a master redevelopment plan for the now-pedestrianised Place Bessières. Located on the north side of town centre and a few steps away from the banks of the River Lot, the seven-theatre, 1,051 capacity ‘Grand Palais’ stands on a site formerly dedicated to the army. The project offered the opportunity to “recreate and reinterpret the symmetry of the pre-existing army barracks,” said the architects, by occupying the area of the east wing of the complex that was destroyed by a fire in 1943. Previously serving as a parking lot, the Place Bessières has been transformed into a “broad and welcoming urban space dedicated to pedestrians and protected by an existing canopy of trees.” The square is mostly paved in brick but benefits from a dense green area at the centre named “the oasis.” Previously housed in a building on the site which was demolished to make way for the project, The Museum of the Resistance will now be


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located on the new cinema building’s top level, with a separate entrance. The building is divided into two “distinct, methodically created and visually highlighted” volumes, said the architects. One is clad in brick and the other of perforated and gilded metal, each one playing a “very precise role in relation to the public space,” they added. The brick


volume, which is visible to the square, mirrors the two buildings of the former barracks, and has been “imagined as a contemporary and identifiable reinterpretation of these existing structures.” Brick was chosen “with the aim of enhancing the collective memory of the citizens of Cahors while avoiding any hint of pastiche.”


ADF NOVEMBER 2020


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