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Project: Sheffield Festival Centre Location: Sheffield, UK Description: Media Centre + Creative Work Space Client: Showroom / Workstation URBAN MARQUEE - URBAN INTERFACE The building is a giant marquee, announcing the Cultural Industries Quarter at an urban scale, and the Showroom + Workstation in particular. The marquee will operate in several ways: IDENTITY + CONTEXT It is an urban gateway building, a landmark at the entrance to the city and to the creative industries district, and a national icon for cinema and the media industries. Activity within the building shows through the billowing, translucent faade, which changes with the light during the day. At night the faade creates a glowing beacon, casting silhouettes of users inside. The continuous frame of the faade demarcates the field of activity while graphically interlocking Showroom with Workstation, old building with new, and the new entrance below with the programs above.COMMUNICATION The southeast, ETFE pillow faade has an integrated display system for an urban scale, graphic interface, signage and lighting system. The graphic interface is programmed to index environmental weather conditions via different color patterns when not projecting specific motion graphics or film images. SPATIAL / SOCIAL INNOVATION The new project extends cinema and new media into the urban realm. The new cinema auditorium is extended outward toward Sheaf Square, and the new entrance lobby is physically and experientially connected to the public space of the city. Cinema patrons participate in the urban theatre of the lobby, facing the entry stairs like actors on screen and moving between the new entrance and the existing faade of the old building. The faade of the new building projects physically into the square and projects media into it, turning the square into an urban auditorium. DRIVEN BY SUSTAINABILITY Twofold strategy: Eco-efficient: low energy/low impact strategies that do more with less. Eco-effective: cradle to cradle design strategies that avoid downcycling. |