PROFESSOR

Steven Mankouche

STUDIO THEME

To be designing on a movie theater in architecture school when peak ticket sales was in 2002 is somewhat of a paradox. However the enduring lure of imagining a space for collective event based cinematic experiences is difficult to give up. It is also hard not think of Greece, when designing a cinema. The word cinema derives from the Greek kinematographos = kinema and grapho. Kinema is the movement and grapho is writing or recording. The first outdoor cinema, built in 1900, was also in Greece. Today Greek cinemas are renown for being places to experience film outdoors, perhaps not with the same views of the Hellenic amphitheaters, but non the less a please to experience the cool summer breeze and city lights. In this studio we designed a movie theater for the Ann Arbor Film Festival called Odeon on a wedge site of Ann Arbor’s Kerrytown. Many movie theaters are called Odeon because it is the Greek word for a small-roofed theater, mainly suitable for singing and concerts.

Taking on a topographic approach seen in amphitheaters, student designed their new Odeon to fit the context of Ann Arbor. The studio took on the directive of the larger Institutions cohort by “translating” their precedent to the material, proportional, climatic and topographic conditions of Kerry Town. Cinemas from Russia, Korea, Spain, Austria, Denmark, England, Thailand, France and Indonesia were transformed to fit into the cozy palate of a small midwestern college town.