Pushinsky Cinema
Re-think moscow's classic cinema - Project shortlisted
Pushkin Square, Moscow.
A snow-white object arises between crowded streets. The pure volume perceived in the distance dematerializes going closer. A willowy and sinuous curtain, made of single twisted elements, gradually discloses the sight of the stately building: the Pushkinsky Cinema Hall becomes again an emblematic place for the city.
The project of a new skin for the building becomes an opportunity to redefine the relation with the context. The facade acts like a filter between interior and exterior, establishing uncommon links between the surrounding pre-existing buildings and the green belt of the opposite mini-park, a traditional meeting place for Moscovite and important stage for the tourists.
The underlying concept of the project is to wrap the existing structure with a curtain, tribute to the theatre and cinema world. The building becomes an ideal stage for Pushkin Square: crossing the permeable skin, the show takes place.
Through a process of abstraction, the initial idea changes: the sinuous look of a velvet curtain is realized with a sequence of slender twisted elements, taking advantage from versatility of DuPont Corian.
Each of these elements is an high and thin parallelepiped, twisted around its main axis. Six different torsion angle create six kind of elements, whose repetition, with a wheelbase of 1,10 m, composes the curtain. The formal return of these elements goes with an extremely simple constructive system: the lifting body is a steel tubular fixed to the ground with a metal board platen; the top of the tubular is joint to the roof of the building through the horizontal terminal part. The casing of Corian divided horizontally into regular portions, bands fixed upon the tubular through metal rings. One meter large strips ensure the possibility to go across the skin next to the primary staircase, where the rotation of adjacent elements makes them parallel, generating large passages.
