Cinema
Cinemas are harder than they look. Behind a facade that is often deliberately plain sit acoustic separation, sightlines, means of escape, and a coordination problem between structure and services that has to be solved before a single seat is placed. Most of these were built inside somebody else's building.
What we design
Multiplexes in shopping centres. Where the cinema has to fit the shell it is given, and the shell was not designed for it.
Arthouse and premium cinemas. Where the point is that it does not feel like a multiplex.
Entertainment complexes. Cinema alongside food, function space and everything else that pays for the building.
Large format and outdoor venues. Including drive-in and event-scale screens.
Selected work
Rialto, Newmarket, for Village. Auckland's largest arthouse cinema. The complex was twenty years old and by 2004 needed a full upgrade, so the owners of the retail centre around it rearranged their own building to allow a much larger foyer and two additional cinemas. That meant extending the existing art facade on Broadway, sympathetically enough to get through the Urban Design Panel. Seven independent auditoria, deliberately more refined than a mainstream cinema.
Skycity Albany, for SkyCity. A multiplex inside a mall, where the integration is the commercial point: the centre supplies the throughput that makes the investment in concessions and front of house pay for itself.
Metro Sky City Entertainment Centre, Auckland. Built over the city's main civic carpark and two inner city streets, and around three historic buildings. It fronts Aotea Square, Bledisloe Concourse and Queen Street, abuts the Civic Theatre and shares its loading. A tall narrow atrium runs diagonally through the complex, replacing the streets it was built over with a pedestrian route. It won the BOMA Supreme Award in 2000, the IES Lighting Premier Design Award in 2000 and an NZIA Resene Colour Award in 2001.
INOX Bangalore, India. Six screens and 1,100 seats on the first floor of a multi-storey shopping centre, in a shell with very low ceilings and awkward volumes. Colour and light do the work the height could not: red and blue against black and white, on reflective and repeated surfaces that multiply the effect.
Granada Mall, Dubai, for Reel Cinemas. Fifteen screens including two Dolby, three Platinum and two children's screens, fitted into an existing mall where the column spacing was difficult and nothing structural could be removed. It also had to cost less than the same client's Dubai Mall cinema while feeling like it belonged to the same family. Completed in 2022, with indoor and outdoor function areas designed in for a later stage.
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Commissioned to design the largest movie screen in the world, on a brief that it should still be the largest a decade later. That meant researching both the technical limits of projection and what was being planned elsewhere before settling the dimensions: 180 metres wide and 66.6 metres high, lit by a bank of Christie projectors in an underground hub throwing over 100 metres. The venue holds more than 650 cars in drive-in mode plus 1,100 seated, and tens of thousands standing for events, with around 4,880 square metres of food outlets and 4,000 square metres of corporate lounges. It was designed to work as a single screening, as a multiplex, or as a venue for product launches, public gatherings and e-sports.
How a cinema project runs
The operating model first. How many screens, how many seats in each, and where the money is actually made. Concessions and front of house usually decide more of the plan than the auditoria do.
Fit the boxes to the shell. In a mall tenancy this is most of the job. Column grid, floor to floor height, and what the landlord will and will not let you take out.
Acoustics, sightlines and escape. Separation between auditoria, rake and screen geometry, and getting a full house out of a windowless box.
Front of house. Foyer, ticketing, concessions and function space, which is what the customer actually remembers.
Documentation, tender and build. Through to opening, with the coordination of structure and services that these buildings always need.
Why Walker
Repeat work for cinema operators including SkyCity, Village, INOX and Reel Cinemas.
Cinemas designed in New Zealand, India, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
Registered architects and interior designers in one studio, which matters more here than in most sectors because the auditorium and the foyer are the same job.
More than 160 local and international design awards.
Common questions
Can you work inside an existing mall tenancy?
Most of this portfolio is exactly that, including one where no structural element could be removed and the client still wanted fifteen screens.
Do you design front of house as well as the auditoria?
Yes, and the two are designed together. Foyer, ticketing, concessions and function areas are where the operator's margin sits.
Do you work outside New Zealand?
Yes. Recent cinema work is in Dubai, Bangalore and Riyadh.
How many screens should a site have?
It depends on the catchment and the shell, and it is worth answering before the lease is signed rather than after.
Start a conversation
Tell us the site, the operator and the number of screens you are aiming at, and we will tell you plainly whether it fits. Get in touch