Blue Cinema | Switzerland
17 februari
Project: Blue Cinema, Chur // Switzerland
Architect: Domenig Architekten AG, Chur // Switzerland
Fabricator + Installer: Rino Weder AG, Oberriet // Switzerland
Façade System: Tray panels SZ20
Year of Construction: 2022
Product: ALUCOBOND® PLUS solid Signal White
Photos: Domening Architekten, Photographer Ingo Rasp
Grand display
The Grison Alps, medieval churches, monastic buildings, as well as the Bishop’s Palace and tightly packed patrician houses are characteristic features in the city of Chur and real tourist attractions. The bigger picture looks rather different: the capital of the Grisons region has a robust service economy and its population has doubled over the last seven or eight decades. Where there used to be fields, there are now modern residential and commercial blocks and some high-rise buildings. Since the middle of the last century, the Chur office of Domenig Architekten has been the motor behind developing and modernising urban space, acting as a design team and an investor. In this dual role, the office also developed the radiant white high-rise residential buildings in City West and a large shopping centre. The latest addition is a multiplex cinema, a three-storey volume measuring 115m long and 32m wide, which was developed in conjunction with meierpartner
architekten. The cinema’s long façades feature few openings and are clad in Signal White ALUCOBOND® tray panels using a horizontal layout. This layout inevitably draws the eye along the full length of the building to the high-rise buildings located behind, creating a visual link and design connection with the new district, despite being separated by railway lines. People leaving the City West shopping centre walk across an inconspicuous bridge to arrive on the second floor of the cinema complex. This is the main foyer and comprises a shop, a restaurant and a roof terrace which offers mountain panoramas like an open-air cinema. The building’s welcoming main façade, however, overlooks the motorway and commercial area on the opposite north-facing side. The architects tilted this façade and covered it with a semi-transparent fabric so images from the interior can be vaguely discerned from outside. Especially at night, the façade turns into the proverbial big screen:
ALUCOBOND® panels with integrated lights frame the surface to form a grand display which sits above an impressive, illuminated entrance, a forecourt, a glazed ground floor, a bar and in front of the foyer stretching the whole height of the building. When the façade is bathed in light in the evening, it also lights up the square in front of it, inspiring people to stroll through the city or join in the nightlife. But this grand, welcoming invitation to “come on in” in dazzling white, echoes into the void. At least up until now, because the area to the north is currently an urban development area. The showpiece entrance is ready for the future, when new city districts are connected and the forecourt becomes a gateway into the city and a hub linking the localities. The Signal White ALUCOBOND®does not only provide a linking function in terms of design, it also has technical benefits: a cinema complex needs a building with the best possible noise and vibration control. At the same time,
because the building site ground conditions were poor, minimising weight was essential. Although the building is a solid concrete structure, the double-skin wall construction with an external curtain wall made of extremely rigid ALUCOBOND® PLUS not only guarantees a very high level of sound insulation and fire protection but also is much lighter in comparison with other materials.