PROJECTS
Steven Powers - Puff Pastry Pictures
Guanjingchan Xu - TempoWave
CONCESSIONS
Twenty-five years into the "experience economy," one would think Film Theatres and Movie Palaces would be spatially "all-in." However, in the near now, designers and studios have hesitated to invest in cinema space as "experience" is being throttled. While technology and social change press hard on current operations, ticket-price economics reveals that, on average, 75% of the ticket purchase price is returned to the film studios. This leaves precious little for local theatre owners, employees, and investment in quality spaces. Thus, on-site "popcorn sales" (concessions) become key to design opportunities as those funds are fluid and stay local.
This studio looks to champion "popcorn economics" by interrogating the material and economic potentials of concessions (edible, ideological and phenomenal) as design drivers of a new Cinépolis Movie Palace in Ann Arbor, MI.
Inspired by Herzog and de Meuron's "Sweet Dreams" - sugar-based landscape propositions of 2004, we began to think with our hands and tongues to make tacky, sticky, luscious, chunky and/or smooth investigative confections and half to fully-baked proposals. We integrated palm oils, milk chocolates, molecular magic, and red carpet priorities into new agencies for food space and the culinary reprioritization of the cinema experience. Bag it, wrap it, roll it, or otherwise get it on the digital go, the cinematic and the gastronomic aspire to make room(s) for more joy, more connection, and “more” theaters.
Eat up!