Studio X named, branded and designed Paper Lantern and Cloudgate Director's Club for UA Cinemas in Shatin.
UA Cinemas asked Studio X to rethink what a cinema could be. The answer was two new brands under one roof in Shatin - Paper Lantern, a cocktail bar and rooftop terrace, and Cloudgate Director's Club, a premium screening venue.
Process
Concept Design
Schematic Design
Detail Design
Tender Documentation
Tender Management
Construction Support
Post-Completion Review
The brief was a gap in the map rather than a site. The New Territories had the demographic but neither the bar nor the screen to match it, and the commercial argument was simply that people were travelling an hour each way for an evening they should have been able to have locally.
Rather than treat this as one venue with two functions, we created two brands. Paper Lantern is the bar and rooftop terrace, named, branded and designed from nothing. Cloudgate Director's Club is the cinema, with its own identity, its own arrival sequence and its own ticketing hall, sitting under the UA Cinemas name.
Our scope ran past the interior on both. We developed the names, designed the spaces and drew the applications that carry them - menus and custom sugar syrup bottles at the bar, gold foil tickets, cups and Now Showing posters at the cinema. The terrace was designed so a guest could take a cocktail to an open-air screening, Humphrey and Ingrid included.
A combined ticketing and bar counter turns a functional cinema transaction into a more social, hospitality-led arrival experience.
A dramatic street-level portal creates a distinct threshold into Cloudgate, using a faceted illuminated entrance to signal the cinema and members’ club beyond.
Arrival at themembers’ club, bringing together reception, cocktail bar and lounge with the outdoor cinema beyond.
Two names, two identities, one commission. Naming both venues, designing both interiors, drawing the menus and the tickets. A brand does not stop at the door.
Selected views
(Approach)A market with the customers but not the venue. Shatin had the audience for a serious bar and a premium screen, and neither existed.
Bob Vallone
Founder, Brand Ambassador & Specialist Consultant
UA Cinema Circuit
Understated elegance and design detailing that is thoughtfully integrated throughout the cinema complex design. Studio X consistently amazes with their all-encompassing design of both the cinema and collaterals to create a unique integrated sub brand for our company.
Planning diagram for Cloudgate Cinema, organising six screening rooms around a central arrival zone with integrated ticketing, refreshments, retail and circulation.
Rooftop planning for Cloudgate, combining a private members’ club, bar and lounge with an outdoor cinema and amphitheatre terrace.
Section through the rooftop cinema, sequencing arrival, bar and lounge, landscaped terrace and stepped outdoor screening amphitheatre.
Brand and building drawn together, because in hospitality they are the same product.
A bar and a cinema are two of the few briefs where the name, the menu, the ticket and the room have to be conceived as a single thing. A guest does not separate them. That is why the scope here ran from naming through interior design to printed and physical collateral, down to the sugar syrup bottles behind the bar and the foil tickets at the box office.
Studio X's involvement covered concept design and the scheme was not built. It is shown because it demonstrates a capability that a purely spatial portfolio hides: we can create a hospitality brand from nothing and then give it somewhere to live - twice here, on a single commission.
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