BUILDING

Restoration and repurposing of the San Nicolò Church

Location: Pesaro

Year: 2018

Project team: Gabriele Corbo, Jacopo Costanzo, Valeria Guerrisi 

with

Eugenia Riffelli

Collaborators: Ludovica Marcacci Balestrazzi, Roxana Durdun, Angela Tanzola

A deconsecrated church. A movie theatre. A theater. A warehouse. Again, a movie theatre.

The challenge was to give a clearly defined space – a 16th-century church – a taste like retro. The Cinema Bambi retains little else of the former Cinema Bambi, besides the name. The building contains details of artistic value, protected by the Superintendence of Fine Arts. The vault of the central hall and that of the apse have frescoes and stuccos which, thanks to the reopening of the central hall, can come back to light and be appreciated again by the public.  For this reason, the new Cinema Bambi proposes itself as a noble house of the Cinema in Pesaro.

Two movie theatres and a multifunctional room. The main theatre will be characterized by a stepped structure, enriched by the vaults of the church dome and the apse, in an elegant context suitable to enjoy films, theatrical performances, scenic readings, and musical concerts. The second room, on the upper floor, will be dedicated to specific groups of publics: children, schools, cine clubs, and amateur groups interested in thematic reviews. A third multifunctional room will offer an easily transformable study room to host training courses and film workshops. On the ground floor, a big foyer will embrace the main room. The project for the Cinema Bambi, through an unusual imaginative journey, will have a great responsibility, both civic and cultural at the same time: to bring citizens closer to the deconsecrated church of San Nicolò – to its construction, to its most intimate nature, making possible to observe and live in the church from an unusual point of view.