sporting - Leisure Opportunities

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 architecture
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
Acoustic materials in the bar area have been refurbished
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.
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 refurbishment
– also in the City. These experiences have been
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Read Leisure Management online leisuremanagement.co.uk/digital ISSUE 2 2012 © cybertrek 2011