Moving images and space. RIFFRAFF 3+4

Thematic Dossier

IMAGES AND SPACE IN MOTION.

RIFFRAFF 3+4, ZÜRICH, SWITZERLAND 2002

Text: Mihaela PELTEACU
Images: Antonia FLUERAȘ
Drawings: Daniela PUIA

Considered obsolete in our country, certainly due to insufficient reflection, the city's movie theater has been ignored and excluded from any project that would otherwise have had the potential to enrich the urban space with new meeting places and public spaces.
The situation is different in the helvet area, where new cinemas are being built, continuing, in the modernist tradition, the typological formula of the building with a cinema, which combines apartments, commercial spaces, etc. with cinema screening rooms in the same structure.
This is the case with the Riff-Raff 3+4 cinema building designed by the Swiss architects Meili, Peter & Partner + Staufer&Hasler, an investment in 2002 by Neugass Kino AG, which involved the extension of the RiffRaff 1+2 cinema bar, built in 1997 by the same team of architects, with two more projection rooms - plus a bar/bar and 5 floors of apartments.
Situated in an industrial neighborhood, RiffRaff is actually part of an existing cinema tradition on Zürich's Neugasse street that dates back to the silent film era and is today an important part of the city's cultural scene, the main hub for independent film, for creations outside the mainstream, and for genuine cinephiles. The confessions of the spectators testify that RiffRaff is more than just a cinema: it is a meeting place appreciated by young people, with a convivial atmosphere and architectural features that make it unique in the whole of buildings of this kind.
The authors of the project understood the investors' desire to offer the public a different kind of movie-going experience in the cinema and, inspired by the seventh art, they have created what could be called a moving space and a sensorial perception.

A multi-functional construction

RiffRaff 3+4 is part of the dense fabric of the neighborhood and encloses the corner of an urban island centered on an older industrial building. By the way it is inserted into the alignment, the cinema building takes over the horizontal registers of the neighboring building, emphasizing the perspectives already existing at street level, except on the top floor which is set back. The two screening rooms (3+4) are located in the first basement of the building, articulated by a central hallway that distributes each one separately. There is also a second basement, which belongs to the dwellings located above and contains annex, common and technical spaces.
The theaters each have their own entrance from the street. The ticket office is on the ground floor and the spectator is led from here, via a staircase in a single ramp, into the distribution hall of the two double-height theaters.
The ground floor, with its generous bar and cinema foyer, is a continuous space that oscillates in the depth of the plan, expanding and compressing vertically and horizontally. Looking at the cross-section, one can see how the spectator can move from the double-height area of the bar into the depth of the movie theaters, passing first through the narrow space of the foyer.
All three functions, directly accessible from the street - bar, foyer and cinema - form a compact whole, forming a single volume in plan and section.
The entrances to the cinema and the bar are arranged in the main facade in Neugasse, and the entrance to the dwellings is set back from the street, possible from a passageway connecting the street and the inner courtyard.
The ground floor is occupied by the bar-bistro, a seemingly banal aspect, but its extension into the depth of the building goes beyond the strictly functional and ambiance requirements. The conception of this space, the close bar-cinema relationship, is in fact the key piece, the originality of the project.
The bar is composed of two distinct areas, a double-height café and a lounge overlooking the foyer of the two screening rooms. At the bar level, contrary to expectations, the projection equipment is located at the same level as the bar, so the light beam has to cross the hallway before reaching the screen. Thanks to a system consisting of a sloping glass panel placed between the movie theater and the hallway/foyer space, a mirror effect makes it possible to reflect the movie from the theater onto the black painted ceiling of the hallway. This mirrored image reaches into the lounge space, connecting the bar space with the experience in the theater where the movie is playing. The architects' gesture pays homage to the early days of the cinematic image, when it was customary to watch movies in the atmosphere of restaurants and cafes.
By resorting to "taking" the image out of the screening room and extending it on the architecturally created surfaces, along the ceiling, along the walls, the bar becomes part of a spatial device that emphasizes the hybrid character of the project, the sensation of a cross between the space of architecture and film.
Darkness in the auditorium is however guaranteed during the performance by the arrangement of a black fabric curtain that can at any time slip to separate the bar from the lobby.
In order for the lounge space to appear as an overhanging space to the lobby, it was necessary to extend it to its maximum extent; thus, it was necessary to de-center the projection equipment and consequently adjust the geometry of the hall.
Surprisingly, the idea of taking the image out of the movie theater turns out to have not only a poetic dimension, but also an extremely pragmatic one by contributing to a judicious use of the available space.

The apartments

The floors above the cinema bar comprise 14 apartments (with a number of rooms ranging from 21/2 to 51/2, i.e. from 85 m2 to 140 m2). The apartments are different, but have in common the way in which kitchens and bathrooms have been conceived as exposed spaces in the facade, with enclosed and open areas, ambiguous at the level of the dwelling in terms of the current distinction between common and individual spaces. Circulation is oriented all along the perimeter, along the façade, and large glazed window areas connect the interior with the city space. The inspiring theme is the bourgeois dwelling in its version freed from convention and representation or, as the architects confess, "freed from its secret ties to traditional forms of use".

A façade perceived in movement

Consistent with the idea of a space in movement and a sensorial perception, the facade of the building with the cinema presents an elaboration that is also revealed in movement. From a distance, the large glazed surfaces of the windows and the sensation of overexposure of the domestic space, which almost becomes an actor of the street, are striking. At a closer look, the eye notices the variations in the height of the window parapets, sensing the complexity of the interior space.
The finish of the exterior walls also takes on different expressivities depending on the position of the observer. The choice of ordinary finishing materials - thermal insulation, plaster and colored paint - was, of course, an adaptation to the budget invested, but also an opportunity to explore the plastic potential of the most banal materials, without any deviation from the rules by which they are usually applied. After being insulated and plastered, the exterior walls were brushed - vertically or horizontally - according to a grid laid out by the architects, then the vertically brushed portions were covered with a coat of red paint and the horizontally brushed portions with a coat of yellow paint. Finally, a gray tint was applied to all surfaces.
The facade thus appears in shades of gray, with a certain vibrancy in the depths that encourages one to approach. This concern for discovering plastic possibilities in common finishing materials has resulted in a patina-like, hand-crafted look, in resonance with the materiality of the industrial neighborhood.

ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE SUMMARY, NR.1/2019
Architecture. Movie.

Cinema