Pálás Cinema Galway Building, Contemporary Irish Architecture, Images
Pálás Cinema Galway Building
Arthouse Films: New Architecture in western Ireland – design by dePaor
3 Dec 2018
Pálás Cinema Galway Building
Location: 15 Merchants Riad Lower, Galway, Republic of Ireland
Design: dePaor, Greystones, Co. Wicklow, Ireland
Pálás Cinema Galway Building
WAF Best Use of Colour Winner at World Architecture Festival 2018

Photo Credit: David Grandorge Peter Maybury

The building is situated in the centre of Galway on the west coast of Ireland, at the edge of the old town between the River Corrib and the docks.

Owned by the city and leased commercially, it is an arthouse cinema comprising three screens with a bar and cafe assembled as a stack of rooms on the plot of a merchant house and its garden.
The Georgian facade is made for streetscape and the body of the building set behind bridging a small courtyard between, as foyer and box office.

Seen in the round, the building extrudes the plot boundaries to become a slate pyramid roof and weathervane.

Cast in situ, it is a series of transfer slabs on discontinuous walls making a building of staircases, the rakes expressed in long section to model the space and influence the elevations. In cross section the volume is cut away to allow south light across the interior and open views.

Above ground, the plan organises the largest room at its centre surrounded by the servant rooms packed into the periphery, natura...