Our proposal for the future Palazzo del Cinema di Locarno aims to build a physical structure that will constitute the urban identity of the Locarno Film Festival. The project aims to bring together the infrastructural needs of the Locarno Film Festival, the pre-existent physical structure of the Palazzo Scolastico and the Piazza Remo Rossi to synthesise a structure which will capture the presence of the Film Festival within the city of Locarno. The Locarno Film Festival does not have yet a recognisable home within the city, and the complex of the Palazzo Scolastico and the Piazza Remo Rossi represents a great opportunity to encrust the Film Festival within an urban structure which has already deep affective relations to the Locarno citizens, and a significant presence in today’s cityscape. We hope that our project will be able to intensify both the presence of the Film Festival and the City of Locarno.

When conceiving our proposal for the Palazzo del Cinema di Locarno , we have tried to avoid the dominant trend during the last few decades, that public architecture needs to make extravagant gestures in order to curate our cities’ public realm. In the aftermath of the 2007 global financial crisis and rampant global warming –and perhaps the demise of “starchitecture” as a default procedure to build urban identity–, our proposal is guided by principles of economy, trying to capitalise in the existing structure and the public affection for the Palazzo Scolastico –which used to host the local schools and now hosts a variety of NGOs and community associations, to provide an architectural identity for the new cinema complex in Piazza Remo Rossi.