Gunnar Asplund's Skandia Cinema in Stockholm is one of the first and finest examples of the building type ever made. It may be destroyed.

It bridges the journey from' theatre to cinema, from Classicism to proto-Modernity, from functionality to myth making. On entering, you go down a flight of stairs to the foyer whose walls were originally dark green. As Simo Paavilainen says, 'In the middle of the greenness stands a brightly-lit white walled building with cornices and red velvet doorways -- a white building in a deep green space. The visitor believes that he is entering a building, but inside he finds a moon and a deep blue arch of sky'. The celestial globes which used to hang in the auditorium have long been removed (but, like most other disassembled parts of the original design, they have been carefully stored).

Care seems to have run out. The owners are desperate to get more rent from their investment invaluable central Stockholm. They would like to transform the Skandia into shops and restaurants, It closed as a cinema last summer. And it is now dark, dank and empty. In Swedish law, the owner has to agree that a property should be put on the national list of protected buildings. The proprietors are determinedly against the idea.

It is time for the Swedish government to step in. As Kjell Furberg (who is heading the campaign to resurrect the cinema) says, the Ministry of Culture should take over the building to make it an international cinema centre. It should be as important as Drottingholm' [the wonderfully preserved eighteenth-century court theatre]. To support the campaign to save the Skandia, get in touch with Furberg at [e-mail], or Karin Winter at the Stockholm Architectural Museum: [e-mail] International protest is urgently needed to shake :the government into action.