Multiplex-cinema Pathé-Küchlin

Old and new

In Steinenvorstadt, Basel’s traditional cinema district, the city’s first multiplex cinema will be built by August 2006: The “Küchlin”, constructed in 1911-12 as a variety theatre, will be extended by the addition of an adjacent new building replacing the former “Comedy”. It will form a cinema complex with a total of eight halls and about 2,300 seats. At the same time, offices, attic flats and a new restaurant will be erected.

Structure

Three superposed cinema halls each, arranged at right angles relative to one another, will be incorporated in the surrounding building structure. Interventions in the old building, part of which is a protected monument, will be essentially limited to the elements integrated in the former stage tower plus the demolition of the neighboring building. There, at the interface between the “Küchlin” and the new building, a wedge-shaped lobby zone will provide access to the halls.

Façade

The façade of the new building will deliberately be designed in a closed form. The motif of a colored, illuminated stage curtain will appear at night, creating an associative reference to the cinema interior. A stone curtain will span the entire width of the façade in a concrete frame. The plasticity of its surface will be modeled after that of the neoclassical Küchlin façade with its profiled semi-columns.