FELGUEROSO CINEMA, LANGREO

client

Ayuntamiento de Langreo

Location

Langreo, Asturias, Spain

Area

528 m²

Status

Completed

Type

Cultural / Rehabilitation

The Felgueroso Cinema is an interesting example of Modern architecture in Asturias, designed by architect Juan José Suarez Aller in 1954. It is located on the central axis of the urban centre of Sama de Langreo. It is a striking and singular elliptical-plan building conceived as the focal point of a group of housing blocks that embrace it in a U-shape, with a porticoed space that filters the access to the garden surrounding it.

Our intervention, carried out in 2007, is based on understanding Architecture as a living process and as a mechanism in a permanent state of change and evolution within the city. The new required programme was much more extensive and complex than the single cinema hall originally housed in the building, making it necessary to subdivide the interior space to create a cinema room on the lower level and, on the upper levels, an audiovisual centre with a multipurpose room incorporating zenithal lighting, exhibition spaces, rooms, and offices.

The intervention involved restoring and preserving the façade, the entrance hall, and the staircases, while introducing a contemporary approach in the remaining areas to create an architecture with a different treatment of scale and light, achieving a more intense and diverse use of the building. At a time when cinemas are disappearing from urban centres, moving to the outskirts into impersonal shopping complexes without architectural character, recovering this building has an added heritage and cultural value, rescuing the historical memory of generations who, as children, let their imagination run free at the Felgueroso Cinema in Langreo.