A Study On Architectural Design Of Cinema Complex

Cinema building belongs to an important category of architecture, which has important cultural and recreational functions in people’s daily life involving consumption and social activities. With both development of international and domestic film industry, large amount of cinema buildings have been built quickly in China after entering 21 st century. At the same time, both technical improvements in film industry and enhancement of people’s recreational needs are driving cinema buildings to make gradual changes from traditional multiplexes to cinema complexes, which have become a new type of movie theater with promising future.Recent years, quite a few new cinemas equipped with high-quality audiovisual environment have been constructed. However, behind this boom exist many problems. Firstly, most cinema buildings are constructed and operated with same pattern as an attached part within a huge commercial complex, without an independent and distinct architectural image, let alone the aesthetic aspects of architecture and space design. Secondly, cinemas in developed countries like the United States and European countries has begun to seek for diversity in functional program, while cinema buildings in China are still confined within multiplexes, lack of positive responses to diverse needs of social interaction. Thirdly, cinema building design pays much more attention to technical audio-visual environment inside auditoriums, usually ignoring cinema as a building entity and its public space outside auditoriums, which leads to building environment difficult to match the quality of hardware. Lastly, designers tend to be confined to a typical spatial pattern, which results in similar forms of cinemas lack of distinct identities.Cinema complex buildings have been displaying some new trends in design as a unique building type in countries with most developed film industry. For example, integrating diverse and hybrid functions to make cinema a more comprehensive place for cultural and leisure use; introducing urban and community public space in proposals to provide a wealth of open space for people’s daily social activities; taking advantages of landscape elements to create pleasant building environment close to nature; considering time dimension of cinema building to optimize its utilization etc. Based upon study of film screening technology and space patterns of cinema building, this study collects and analyzes cases of outstanding cinema complexes to conclude some valuable information for cinema complexes design in terms of architectural space and further proposes some design strategies, hoping to provide a useful reference for future cinema building design.