HOYTS CINEMA COMPLEX

continued

Thehalfpipe is on the menu to give patrons a different way of engaging with cinema: on your own bean bag on a skateboard ramp covered with a lawn in front of the big screen. It is chill out cinema. Layback luxury inspired by the local skateboard park and the great Australian back yard. It has already achieved cult status with Melbourne's inner city cinema goers. The Directors Suite is the most sophisticated cinema offer. The seats are leather. The food has been designed with Melbournešs best restaurants in mind and the bar reflects contemporary hospitality trends. The industrial baroque interior combines motifs of classical luxury, like the spiral staircase that plunges down into the lounge, with gritty details from the modern city like the laser cut Gobo-chandeliers and the stainless steel bump rails protecting the English wallpaper. Guests come here to combine privacy, comfort and the luxury of fine food with a good movie. It designed to maximise the sense of escape, more like a private club or a cigar bar.


While the viability of the traditional cinema offer is constantly being questioned, cinema is still the undisputed queen of the mass media arts. Focus testing tells us everybody still goes to the movies. Corporate investment in cinema production is Pharaonic, the glamour and excitement; legendary and infectious. It is both a mirror and a record of the evolution of contemporary urban life. With this project we wanted to respond spatially to the opportunities generated by the burgeoning presence of digital space. We have sought to explore or identify in-between spaces where people can interact with digital space and narratives, of which cinema is just one example. It has seemed to us that the digital environment and the physical one are evolving in parallel yet strangely disconnected ways. The interface in digital parlance is only understood as the Graphical User Interface not the space the user must inhabit to connect to the digital domain. We have sought to address the social, psychological, physiological and haptic dimensions of this connection.

Credits

Design team: Michael Trudgeon, David Poulton
Documentation: David Poulton, Stephen Mellars, Warren Parker
Visualisation, interface design and Graphic design: Glynis Nott
Cinema auditorium design by Andrij Rostek of Gray Puksand Architects
Media Platform design and installation: PIVoD Technologies
Digital Skin technology: Joe Casamento, Lightmoves
Interior consultant: Veronica Saunders
Documenting architects: Gray Puksand
Photography: Peter Clarke


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Architecture Projects

NAB LAB:
DESIGNING FOR USER EXPERIENCE AND INNOVATION


ROAD TRAFFIC AUTHORITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES, BLACKTOWN

BANK OF THE FUTURE
NATIONAL AUSTRALIA BANK


HOYTS CINEMA COMPLEX
MELBOURNE CENTRAL


HOYTS CINEMA COMPLEX
BLACKTOWN


DIGITAL CINEMA CAPSULE
AT THE AUSTRALIAN CENTRE FOR THE MOVING IMAGE


2008 Š Crowd