First Light

As you can see, this is a very small cinema in all respects, including a very low ceiling height. Then take in the fact that we had a ducted A/C system and directly above the cinema is the children’s bedroom, this suddenly became one of the hardest cinemas we have had to design.

The client wanted to seat as many people as possible, but that required too many sacrifices. What we ended up with as a compromise was to provide one row of primary seating and this is what we designed and calibrated the room for. The other factor being the ceiling height meant creating seating tiers was out of the question, so instead we put in one 200mm riser which allowed us to run the A/C through the floor and provided a place for bean bags to sit in the room. A bar bench was used at the rear, which then provided seating for up to 12 people with clear sight lines.

Although the interior design might seem simple, we custom designed the Fortress seating (which is a 4 seat lounge, but can seat up to 6, with custom fold-down arms that fit into the chair back when not in use). We went through 13 interior design story boards before finding the perfect solution for the client (who consequently loved every version). While that process took much longer than normal, the client was impressed by our desire to not stop until he was happy. Each time he made a suggested change, we would reassess each element to achieve the correct balance. The end result is amazing for such a small space.