ArchitecturePordenone · Renovation and expansion completed
Alberto Caiola Studio redesigns the Cinemazero arthouse cinema in Pordenone, Italy
Ultramarine drapes, restored 1950s marble and a new glass pavilion tie together three sites of a much-loved arthouse cinema.
Cinemazero is an arthouse institution in Pordenone, in north-east Italy, and its renovation by Alberto Caiola Studio pulls together three separate sites: the main cinema foyer, a new community pavilion called SpazioZero, and an expanded Mediateca in the 16th-century Palazzo Badini. The thread that links them is a saturated ultramarine blue, set against old stone, timber and marble.
In the main building, the studio has stripped clutter from the nine-metre-high 1950s foyer. Floor-to-ceiling blue drapes hide later additions, leaving the original travertine walls and terrazzo floor with geometric dark marble inlay to do the talking. A suspended lightbox ceiling glows over the ticket counter and the doors to four screens, named after Totò, Pasolini, Tina Modotti and the Sala Grande. A covered walkway leads to SpazioZero, a 100-square-metre glazed pavilion looking onto the neighbouring public park.
Up on the palazzo's first floor, the Mediateca holds a media lab with blue screens, a lounge with open archive shelving, a 20-seat micro-cinema and a VR room lit with neon under historic ceilings. A metal-clad doorway into the archive frames an original set piece from Fellini's Satyricon.
The project reached designboom as a reader submission from the studio. Film lovers passing through Friuli will want to catch a screening and look up at that foyer.
Our summary of a story from designboom, published 3 November 2026. Read the original
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From designboom