The Falcon Cinema | Berekuso, Accra, Ghana | 2024

Category: Museums and Cultural Buildings
Architect: Jeanne Autran-Edorh, Belgium
Architecture Office: Studio Neida
Lead Architect: Jeanne Autran-Edorh 
Design Team: Fabiola Büchele, Léa Sodangbe, Yvan Messi Mintsa, Hermine Nado Santo
Client: Jacqueline Nsiah (The Falcon Cinema Ghana)
Photographer: Renders by Studio Neida

The project examines a cinema dedicated to preserving Africa’s cinematic legacy while inspiring the filmmakers of tomorrow.

A purpose-built cinema and film community space constructed from earth materials and featuring a thatched roof made from palm leaves is to be created in Ghana. Inspired by communal compounds found in Asante architecture, the project features four buildings arranged around a courtyard. The Falcon has one 250- and one 150-seater screening room, a restaurant, an archive, communal spaces as well as an outdoor cinema. At a later date a smaller second compound will be built to host living quarters for filmmakers in residence.

Contemporary and archival film making from Africa and its diaspora will be screened, discussed and situated within a critical historical context. The cinema’s mission is the creation of a comprehensive archive with the distinct aim of ensuring reels, which are currently strewn across the globe, are returned to an institution that has their longevity as one of its main aims. The Falcon is to complement Ghana’s rapid growth across all sectors with a space for cineasts to host and archive the industry’s rich past, while fostering a new generation of critical and creative thinkers and doers who are shaping the country’s film industry of tomorrow.

Located in Berekuso, a suburb to the north of Accra and home to Asheshi University, the site speaks to the continued growth of the Ghanaian capital’s urban sprawl. A planned road will connect the site to the city center, yet it will remain somewhat outside its main thoroughfares and thus offer a tranquil escape among beautiful landscapes.

Choosing to build a state-of-the-art screening room with renewable material and ventilation will make The Falcon a stand-alone cinema experience combining the comfort of a material befitting the local context with an ambitious and thoughtful film program. As streamers have captured much of the film viewing market, it is ever more important that onsite cinema projects take into consideration having to provide an experience that cannot be had at home.