Cinerama Dome And Arcwood Cinema Study

For the past one hundred years, cinemas remain one of the greatest community centres for amusement and entertainment for people of all ages. During this time span, there have been many dominant industrial, social, technological and artistic trends in cinema design. Three cinemas, all situated in California, are The Egyptian Theatre (1922), the Cinerama Dome (1963) and the Arclight Cinema (2015), see map in Fig 1. The California location has been selected in order to create a historical overview of this typology. According to The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture, typology is the study of symbolic representation of types, it is “the form or character that distinguishes a class or group of buildings or building type” (Stevens Curl, 2015, p 786).

It embodies the distinctive characteristics of the mid-century modernist style and suburban roadside architecture popular during the 1960s. The dome is located at 6360 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California. It was designed by Welton Becket and Associates and completed in 1963, see Fig 3. Becket’s design was inspired by Buckminster Fuller and the nation’s mid century obsession with landing on the moon. The Dome resembles a giant spacecraft and boasts futuristic floating stairways, a first for any movie theatre at the time. It was the first new theatre to be built in over 30 years in Hollywood, took 16 weeks to complete and cost just over $2 000 000, four times its budget according to the Arclight Cinemas YouTube clip, The Cinerama Dome - Short Documentary, 2013. The Cinerama Dome was the only concrete geodesic dome constructed in the world, according to Boxoffice, (1963, p 10), with a dome roof 140 metres in diameter. It was composed of 316 pre-cast concrete panels, most of which are hexagonal and pentagonal shapes in 16 different sizes, each weighing approximately 1450

It is the seventh multiplex cinema developed by the Arclight chain in Los Angeles and was completed in November 2015. A Multiplex cinema is defined as ‘a motion picture theatre with three or more separate auditoriums in the same physical structure, all sharing the same ticket booths and same entrance” (Kroon 2010, p 421). The cinema is located on the 3rd level of the Santa Monica Place shopping mall. The Macerich company, owners of Santa Monica Place, hired Jerde Architectural Design to complete the contemporary style complex. Jerde are an architectural design and urban planning firm from California. Their philosophy is “creating memorable and compelling public experiences within entertainment retail” (Lukas, 2013, p 25). The company prides themselves on creating projects to “revitalise districts and create new public realms” and their work involves designing memorable places that people love to visit and go back to (Lukas, 2013, p26). The third level above Bloomingdale’s was a seldom used venue rented for events and parties. The cinema is close to the beach community of Santa Monica and the famous Santa Monica Pier. The area is always crowded and many tourists visit the area. Santa Monica was