Giulești Cinema. A new scripting of the movement

Authors’ Comment

”Cinema is the Seventh Art” - Ricciotto Canudo
Drawing on Canudo’s understanding of cinema as a synthesis of the arts of space and time, the project explores the reactivation of Giulesti Cinema through an intervention in which restoration, contemporary architecture, landscape and movement become parts of the same narrative.
The cinema has progressively lost both its function and its relationship with its surroundings. The abandonment of the building was accompanied by the deterioration of the adjacent park, partially occupied by parking areas, storage spaces and parasitic structures. Heritage is therefore understood not merely as an architectural object, but as part of a wider system of urban, social, and cultural relationships. Recovering the building consequently requires the recovery of its surrounding territory.
The intervention begins with the conservation and restoration of the existing cinema, preserved as a landmark and as the core of the new composition. The extension rejects formal imitation: old and new remain legible as distinct moments, while contemporary architecture becomes a new layer in the evolution of the site.
At a time when film viewing is increasingly shifting towards domestic spaces and digital platforms, the project does not attempt to preserve the cinema as a rigid typology, but rather to redefine its role. In line with Renzo Piano’s understanding of cinemas as places capable of creating community, tehy are approached as adaptable cultural infrastructures, where the collective experience of film can expand into education, research, production and social interaction.
The programme therefore transforms the cinema into a centre dedicated to film culture. The restored historic auditorium is complemented by four new screening halls, a cinematheque, media library, museum and immersive spaces, film archives and restoration laboratories, workshops, editing facilities and community spaces.
The concept and arrangement of the new volumes derive from Serghei Eisenstein’s theory of montage. Just as cinematic meaning emerges through the relationship and tension between successive shots, the architectural volumes are conceived as sequences in dialogue through overlaps, shifts, rotations and changes of direction. Frame, sequence and montage become design tools, with the visitor’s movement progressively constructs the perception of architecture.
This principle also gives the project its title ”A New Scripting of Movement”. If cinema scripts movement through the succession of frames in time, the project attempts to rescript it through architecture: through sequences of spaces, shifting perspectives and the movement of the body. Movement no longer belongs solely to the projected image, it becomes the very medium through which space is perceived.
The same logic extends into the park, reclaimed as public space and as continuation of the cultural programme through pavilions (exhibition, immersive, workshop and social), pathways gathering spaces, an outdoor amphitheatre and open-air screenings.
The project ultimately proposes an approach to heritage in which conservation does not exclude transformation. The existing cinema becomes the first frame of a new sequence, while the contemporary intervention continues its narrative through a montage of memory, movement and architecture.