HOYTS CINEMA COMPLEX

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The ticket box is skinned with a 30 metre long computer controlled LED light wall. The wall is programmed to change the ambience throughout the day and to respond to the different movie menus on offer. A cinema needs a very different ambience at 10am on Tuesday from that at 8pm on Saturday night. The walls have been programmed to run on a cycle that subtly changes throughout the day. Light becomes a key actor in dynamically framing the ambience from a chilled experience to the frenetic one. Every two weeks the cinema is a different place, transformed by the films being shown. Imagine if restaurants did this! For us the 'intelligent wall' or programmable surface is a new spatial or architectural interface; framing, activating and energising city spaces and interior spaces. The intelligent wall is a fusing of new computer mediated communication technologies with architecture to create a mixed reality. It is a child of a cinematic vision and cinematic techniques.

At the entry to the main cinemas, foyer and lounge level the cinema logo has been designed as an architectural screen, both a massive sign to be seen from the adjoining public multi-storey void and a see-through filter connecting the foyer to the great atrium in the shopping centre. The historic tower preserved at it's centre is seen as the site of large public events. In pursuit of the destination we have created intense zones, each with a singular feature like the wrap around stacks of back-lit poster boxes. These are luscious menus. Film is by its very nature is voyeuristic. It challenges our notions of public and private. The power and seduction of voyeurism to intrigue people is very strong, inviting in people's imagination and emotional participation. The framing of public and semi-private space within commercial precincts gives us the option of reinvigorating those spaces, seeking a sense of voyeurism, adventure and discovery. Cinema is social, on a grand public scale. It's an event. Like the opera it can be as much about other people and other activities, like the passegiare, that happen to converge at the theatre. Cinema is about catering for people together. Cinema is hospitality. The richness of the collective social experience is central.

Within the foyer the candy bar is again wrapped in a programmable LED skin. The candy bar folds around from the foyer to a lounge that is in fact a fully functioning cinema, open to the foyer. This lounge allows patrons to come into the cinema complex and see trailers before buying a ticket and it is a unique bar cafe space where the whole feeling of the space is transformed by information from the large format cinema screen. The double height Cinema-bar lounge space gives us a surprising and grand hospitality space. Pendant lighting from the ceiling creates intimate moments within this large void. Through this facility we want to find new ways of entertaining cinema patrons while exploiting systems of cinema projection. The whole lounge space can be closed off and then the entry is through a marble box on set to the side. When the lounge is closed using a translucent operable wall for special functions the entry point becomes ceremonial.

The cinema boxes have been divided up into different zones or destinations each with their own unique experience. They are the East End, thehalfpipe and Directors Suite. The public space at the East End of the cinema complex announces the very big cinema screens. It is designed with the industrial functionalism of a freeway. These spaces get their colours, graphics and sense of speed from freeway signage. Freeways to us are part of Melbourne's suburban growth, where most of us live. We wanted to link the energy of the rapid suburban transit to the block buster movie launch.

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