Before the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, or Reina Sofía Museum, there was the General Hospital of Madrid, an 18th-century construction designed by José de Hermosilla and Francisco Sabatini. In 1992, it opened as Madrid’s new art museum, home to the works of Gris, Dali, Picasso, and Miro. The museum underwent many interventions and expansions, including those by Jean Nouvel. The latest update adds a new cinema, a striking, starry, and geometric space designed by Barcelona-based studio BACH.

The cinema takes the place of a former auditorium, originally built in 1987 by Jaume Bach and Gabriel Mora. To usher the space into its new era, the studio, formed by Bach and his son, Eugeni Bach, began with first preserving the iconic elements of the original design, namely the triangular projection room that organizes and divides circulation at the entrance and the triangle suspended above the stage, which acts as a reverberation device.

What the architects did change was the translation boxes, which were stripped from the site; the slope of the seating area, which was increased to improve visibility to the screen; and the materiality of the entrance hall was swapped to improve acoustic performance and integrate a new image and sound system.

New additions still cohere with the original use of geometric and sculpted objects. In the entrance hall, a new triangular storage unit juts out from the wall, its shapely structure fitting right at home amid the vaulted ceiling and serliana.

The hall is refinished in red. BACH chose the color due to its signature use in movie theaters throughout architectural history. Dense, velvet curtains make a dramatic transition to the theater itself, recalling the cinematic moments of Luis Buñuel, David Lynch, Pedro Almodóvar, and Aki Kaurismäki.

Beyond the curtain, the interiors take on hues of blue and red. The vaulted ceiling is blue to mimic a starry night which continues down to the walls. Meanwhile, red makes up the seating, carpet, and wainscoting.

Uniting the contrasting colors are the windows. The former hospital windows were closed up with wooden panels, featuring a carved abstraction of raindrops, continuing the idea of movie-watching outside. Absorbent surfaces are placed in the window niches to become points of soft lighting.

The new cinema is a blend of the building’s history and the past and futures of cinemas anchored through a series of geometric objects. The result is movie magic.