ARCHITECT’S FOCUS
Fletcher Priest were given a brief to rethink and reuse as many of the existing spaces and materials as possible FLETCHER PRIEST
A former Methodist church and library in the heart of east London has been transformed into a contemporary ‘social cinema’ space. Project architect Mareike Langkitsch talks to Julie Cramer about the new Hackney Picturehouse
How did you come to be involved in the project? As a practice, we have more than 35 years of cinema archi- tecture experience including the award-winning restoration of Newcastle’s Tyneside Cinema, which reopened in 2008. We were approached by the City Screen Picturehouse group to design their 20th project. The nice thing about City
Screen Picturehouse is that they don’t just do cinemas but offer other things as well, such as arts and event spaces and bars and restaurants. They always try to get the local community involved. It’s a much more wholesome approach.
What can you tell us about the original building in Hackney? It is set within a conservation area, but the building itself was not listed, which obviously made things a lot easier for us when approaching the project. The site used to be a library and a Methodist church dating back to the early 20th century. Just over a decade ago it was turned into the Hackney Ocean music venue, which was a major investment at the time, but unfortunately the venue was not very successful. It’s also in the area of Hackney that was hit by the riots in August 2011. Work on the building was ongoing at the time and we saw our project on the news. The cinema represents a major investment in the heart of Hackney at this critical time, and offers various arts-related community activities as well as a four screen cinema.
Acoustic materials in the bar area have been refurbished 28 Read Leisure Management online
leisuremanagement.co.uk/digital
Have you had personal experience of working on cinema projects before? I recently ran the design of [Japanese bank] Nomura’s auditorium in the Fletcher Priest-designed Watermark Place office development in the City of London. I’m also heading an audit for the Barbican Centre’s cinema refur- bishment – also in the City. These experiences have been
ISSUE 2 2012 © cybertrek 2011
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