The project is situated at Long Hu Paradise Walk, Jiang Bei, Nanjing, which is the national scientific and technological innovation base. This has triggered us to design this cinema project with a concept closely related to science and technology.
In many futuristic movies, you can see the visualization of messages appearing quickly like a turbulent stream, as if the way we are living in such a technology-driven society. Inspired by this characteristic, we used various arrangements of circular holes to illustrate the ‘flow of information’, which also added a technological vibe.
There’s a unique spatial design at the lobby - the ceiling height changes from low to high, which makes the lobby with the higher ceiling resemble the shape of a canyon. So we placed the custom-made patterns on the higher ceilings and on the wall in a random arrangement. The light shines through the circular holes of the metal plate to map out circular light spots, just like the rapid flow of information in the internet world. We applied this design technique to the entrance passage as well, so we can see the looming effect of the original auditorium characters through the circular holes. We have also designed a pendant and wall lamp based on this ‘circular’ concept. The pendants were installed on the ceiling and wall of the hallway to enrich the light and shadow contrast created by various light sources.
As for the color, we have chosen a brighter tone of gold for the whole space. The golden color can accentuate the light and create a shimmering effect. It gives people a brighter feeling of the space, which gives people a more pleasant visual enjoyment - this is especially important to bring this kind of positive energy to the audiences who have been heavily impacted by the pandemic since 2020.
You can see that we have relied more heavily on the lighting at the auditoriums, compared with our previous designs. At the IMAX auditorium, the layered wall designs are highlighted by the illumination of linear light - accentuating the contrast of colours and layers of the wall partitions. At the rest of the auditoriums, we have customised a unique pendant. The light shines on the black wall from an even smaller angle, and the light is used to emphasize the overall wall design.