ALESIA CINEMAS THEATER PARIS

Across the lower section, the last segment of each ribbon folds up to form a canopy over the pavement, beneath which the public enters, as if stepping into the image to come into the building ... The facade for the project required a specific design, somewhere between a lighting installation and a digital skin. Screening is made possible by 230,000 luminous points spread over a height of 12m and a width of 19m, each independently controlled. Day and night, this large animated envelope will play with a superimposition of images and content. The internal foyer spaces can be glimpsed through moving images that act like a luminous filter. Around eight new, well-proportioned film theatres, conceived for optimum visual and acoustic quality, we have designed unusually generous reception spaces, where cinemas are accessed via a circulation that is almost theatrical. A large vertical foyer contains stairs, escalators and tiered seating, which together form a sort of sculptural composition hung on the inside of the glazed facade that gives onto the Place d'Alésia. Inside the building it is the cinemas that are dramatised, by highlighting the steps made by the underside of the tiers of seating, whereas outside it is the films that are centre stage, screened on a huge facade brought to life by a curtain of pixelated LEDs that enable a variety of animation. This facade is composed of a dozen vertical ribbons, folded to form a cascade of alternating facets. Towards the centre, these great folds are glazed and covered in bars of LEDs to form a huge curtain of pixels.