In the heart of the Sabatini building in Madrid, the former auditorium of the Reina Sofía Museum has been given a new lease on life. Under the direction of BACH / Jaume Bach, Anna & Eugeni Bach, the space has been transformed into a cinema and auditorium, a place where the deep blue of a night sky converses with the scarlet red of theaters of yesteryear. A transformation that tells the story of cinema as much as the story of the gaze.
Some projects seem self-evident, but this self-evidence is the result of patient work on memory. The transformation of the former Reina Sofía auditorium into a cinema and auditorium belongs to this rare category. Inaugurated in 1987 by Jaume Bach and Gabriel Mora within the walls of the Sabatini building—named after the former 18th- century General Hospital of Madrid designed by José de Hermosilla and Francisco Sabatini—the space had served for nearly forty years as the museum's conference and event venue. When the institution acquired two new auditoriums during its expansion in 2005, the original room found itself awaiting a new purpose. Jaume Bach, in partnership with his son Eugeni and Anna Bach, daughter-in-law, thus returned to his own roots. It is a rare privilege for an architect to engage in a dialogue with his own work decades later.
The project is neither a demolition nor a complete rebuild. Rather, it is a careful and chromatic reinterpretation of the original space. The 1987 auditorium was based on a powerful intuition: to arrange "geometric objects" beneath a large vault resembling a starry sky, under which various events unfolded. Two of these objects, which have become emblematic, have been carefully preserved. The triangular projection room, which organizes circulation at the entrance, remains in its place. The triangle suspended above the stage, originally designed as an acoustic reverberation device, also remains, now transformed into a large acoustic screen that conceals the central speakers. The old translation booths, now obsolete, have been removed. The tiered seating has been redesigned to offer a steeper slope and improved screen visibility.
The most striking intervention is undoubtedly chromatic. BACH chose to clad the vault in a deep, almost nocturnal blue and to adorn the floor and walls with shades of red. The gesture might seem theatrical; in reality, it is remarkably coherent. The blue extends the initial idea of a starry sky under which the audience gathers, transforming the experience into an almost astral immersion. The red evokes a whole architectural history, recalling the classical tradition of Viennese theater interiors or the grand, darkened halls of the 20th century , such as post-war Spanish cinemas. The architects explicitly cite two foundational references: Erik Gunnar Asplund's Skandia cinema in Stockholm, a jewel of Scandinavian modernism, and the Cine Doré in Madrid, a venerable venue where the capital's cinephile heritage was partly forged. Between these two poles a silent dialogue is established, which anchors the project in a lineage rather than in a rupture.
The old hospital windows, remnants of the original building, presented a delicate challenge: how to integrate these openings into a projection room that demands darkness? BACH's solution demonstrates remarkable sensitivity. The openings were covered with wooden panels adorned with carved motifs evoking raindrops, suggesting the idea of a silent exterior. Absorbent surfaces placed in the window niches transformed into points of soft light, highlighting the openings as exterior volumes and reinforcing the paradoxical sensation of being outside while remaining in semi-darkness.
The entrance hall extends this logic. A new triangular piece of furniture, echoing the geometry of the projection booth, guides the flow of visitors towards the back of the auditorium. The existing Serlian window—a three-pane opening characteristic of classical Italian architecture—has been preserved, but the entire hall has been unified in a single shade of red. Visitors cross a deliberately immersive threshold, as if passing through the curtain of a stage before sunrise. And it is precisely through thick velvet curtains that the new auditorium is revealed, in a setting that evokes, almost like a promise, the cinematic worlds of Luis Buñuel, Pedro Almodóvar, David Lynch, and Aki Kaurismäki.
This transformation reveals something more than a simple technical renovation. BACH offers a meditation, almost understated, on what it means today to keep a cultural space alive through time. To preserve without freezing. To transform without erasing. In this room where the blue of the vault meets the red of the seats, where the memory of an 18th - century hospital converses with that of 20th - century movie theaters , the Reina Sofía opens a space that belongs to no particular era, and this is undoubtedly what already makes it a place for our time.
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Calle Santa Isabel, 52, Madrid (Spain)
BACH / Jaume Bach, Anna & Eugeni Bach
