PROFESSOR

John McMorrough

STUDIO THEME

Film theaters, as a nexus of both cultural and commercial interests, have, throughout their history, been thought to be in danger of losing audiences to other diversions. To forestall this perceived decline, cinema has, over time have, to offering an ever-changing array of ambiances and enhancements, which in their accumulation have shaped the unique conventions of “seeing a movie.”

Responding to these conditions of captivation, economy, cultivation, and technology, entailed within the building type of the “motion picture theater,” the objective of this studio was the conceptualization and design of a new institution at the University of Michigan, devoted to the study of film viewing. Provisionally titled “UM Movies” (Motion Oriented, Visually Immersive, Environmental Settings) this faculty was to be located on North Campus, and is envisioned to address a multiplicity of desiderata: to act as a archive for film scholarship, a workshop for new viewing formats, anchor a North Campus Arts District and provide a site of entertainment for nearby residents.

Studio efforts consisted of collaborative research into the history of movie theaters in terms of projection (technology of film), reception (geometry of audience), accommodation (arrangement of amenity), and identification (semiology of massing), a collective exercise in programming and site development, and individual design proposals though diagrams, models, drawings, and images (still and moving).