The project, located in the heart of Montreal’s performing arts quarter, incorporates three new projection theatres, two multi-media exhibition spaces, cafe, foyer, media library, studios, archival museum storage, and graduate film school. The building itself, designed as a series of episodes, becomes the spectacle of its own collected motion pictures, the architecture a film screen to the street. The public circulates between the nine projectors across the cantilevered ramp casting shadows to the street beyond. Crossing the membrane of moving images, one enters under the floating “agora theatre” which dominates the entry hall. From this suspended theatre, the museum unfolds in concrete, steel, and glass through a kinetic play of planes and skins. Borrowing from cinematography, the Cinematheque Quebecoise exploits light, transparency, and movement to create a dreamlike somber palette of montage and filmic voyeurism.

 

• CAMPUS/CULTURAL
• Commercial