Renovation and Extension of Three Pierrots Cultural Centre - Cinema-Theatre

The rehabilitation reinterprets a 1980s theatre whose circular volumes once projected culture into the city. It preserves this identity while addressing accessibility, renewal, and spatial coherence. Through minimal intervention, selective reuse, and careful reorganisation, the project transforms complexity into clarity. The extension, conceived as a luminous urban beacon, opens the theatre to the street, welcoming all audiences into a light-filled space that unites heritage, structure, and contemporary life.

Built in the 1980s, the Théâtre des Trois Pierrots embodies a strong architectural identity rooted in its circular form and expressive concrete. The project reinforces this legacy by embracing the existing structure as a resource rather than a constraint. Through minimal intervention, selective reuse, and spatial reconfiguration, it reinterprets the building’s original generosity while resolving its functional shortcomings. The new extension completes the volumetric composition, establishing a civic presence along rue du Mont Valérien. Like an urban beacon, it opens the cultural life of the theatre to the city, combining monumentality with openness. Light becomes a structural and symbolic medium, guiding movement from the street to the auditorium, transforming the experience from shadow to luminosity. The design chooses continuity over rupture, allowing the building to evolve with dignity, in dialogue with its time and place.

The extension is built with a load-bearing ashlar stone structure topped by sandblasted concrete bands, establishing a dialogue with the original prefabricated concrete façades. The use of Saint-Leu limestone anchors the project in its regional context while promoting a low-carbon material culture. This encounter between prefabrication and handcraft, between industrial precision and artisanal care, redefines the relationship between the machine and the hand. The hand-carved stone and finely polished in-situ concrete offer a tactile counterpoint to the roughness of the existing surfaces. Structurally, the new lobby achieves a form of calm heroism: a 15-metre span slab, hollowed at its centre and resting on eight 45 cm stone columns, clears the interior of supports. Behind the apparent simplicity lies a sophisticated engineering effort, expressing a contemporary synthesis of technical rigour, material authenticity, and environmental responsibility.