Winners of the Long Island Cinema Center Competition

Three winners and four Honorable Mentions have been revealed for the suckerPUNCH-curated Long Island Cinema Center competition in Queens, New York. The international design ideas competition challenged entrants to create a large scale center to celebrate cinema and rescue the moviegoing experience from fading into obsolescence.

The center will engage current trends in technology with 16 large screens and will challenge the current idea of the cinema through diverse program such as a cafe, bar, film and book store, auditorium for lectures and festivals, and an outdoor screening area with amazing Manhattan and river views. Proposals had to investigate how architecture can rethink the cinematic experience in the twenty first century through the design and integration of new technologies and their larger screens. The competition asked the center's design to rethink the experience of the cinema as one that will foster interaction with other film lovers and will leave solitary film consumption behind.

1st Place: "LIC Cinema"
Madjid Montazeri + Ali Afsarmanesh (Iran)

Metaphor: One who enters, makes a picture of himself on a movie, and these two images are merged to the background of Manhattan.

Concept: 3 frames are located toward the river facing Manhattan respectively, the first frame is of a great screen reflecting the faces of people entering the site with hologram live projectors, as Andy Warhol once said: “in the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” - more info

 

2nd Place: "Elevated Cinema"
Dennis Burke / Nick Kunkle / Eduardo Ponce (St. Louis, Missouri)

This project challenges the typical sequence of experiences associated with cinemas today. Instead of a linear experience, one with a dis-tinct beginning and end, our building creates a loop. A loop that rises and falls like the climax of a movie. In this way the building responds to cinema in a unique way. The building replicates the excitement and build-up of emotion like a movie. We have created a place to experience cinema that is as exciting to go to as it is to stay. - more info

 

3rd Place: "LOOP"
Marcela Chan + Kevin Kwok (Los Angeles/Miami)

Two interconnected imperatives combine to drive the design for LOOP- to embracing technology in generating visual impact, creating a choreographed ambiance; and to inextricably combine this with a crafted, stimulating physical experience. - more info

The competition jury comprised Paul Preissner (Paul Preissner Architects); Stella Lee (Bureau V); Gil Akos (Studio Mode); Abigail Coover (Hume Coover Studio, suckerPUNCH); Nathan Hume (Hume Coover Studio, suckerPUNCH); Jose Gonzalez (SOFTlab); and Mike Szivos (SOFTlab).

See renderings of the four Honorable Mentions in the image gallery below. The top 23 boards can also be seen on the suckerPUNCH flickr page.