Rich Mix - Cinema Bar
Shoreditch, London
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- Rich Mix - Cinema Bar, Shoreditch, London
- Client: Rich Mix
- Duration: 2018 – 2024
- Contract value: £615,000
Adam Khan Architects in collaboration with Citizens Design Bureau won a competition to develop a masterplan and designs for an ambitious transformation of the Rich Mix arts centre in Bethnal Green in 2018. An intensive process of engagement, visioning, brief development and costed options allowed a lean set of low-cost low-carbon phases to be developed as an alternative to wholesale redevelopment. The first phase - the cinema bar- has been completed by AKA.
The first phase works are to the first floor and give a new cinema bar, learning and participation space and green rooms. This provides clear orientation and welcome to the cinemas and a social destination. A key aim across the phases is to connect up the many diverse (and currently siloed) programmes and tenants to increase encounter, sociability and synergy. Behind the scenes there has a radical rework of the air handling and heating systems to solve longstanding chronic problems and improve sustainability.
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'As bold and sleek as it is welcoming and
comfortable, the Cinema Bar reflects AKA’s
meticulous and imaginative design process.'
The first phase - a new Cinebar - delivers a clear entry and welcome to the cinemas and a social destination for the whole building, to connect its many diverse users. Rich Mix has an enviable audience and tenant diversity but lacked the spaces that promote encounter and sociability. We were interested in how a bar could be inviting and aspirational without excluding and gentrifying, how it could work both by day and night, and have a strong character whilst establishing a clear Rich Mix identity. The next phase will be the opening up and expansion of the ground floor.
Drawing on Matisse’s red paintings and Hermann Czech cafes, a bold red and warm palette encompasses red felt acoustic absorption and two shades of overlapping curtain to allow change atmosphere from day to night. Rimex steel wall panels balance the room and give soft distorted reflections of the light, the colours and the bar users. An acoustic window to the stage gives sight of live events without the sound and, set flush to the wall panels produces an ambiguous layering of reflection and shadow, invoking a liminal condition between screen and reality.
Collaborators: Rich Mix, Skelly & Couch, Katy Marks from Citizens Design Bureau, Momentum, The Planning Lab, Lewis Khan.
