Film makers

The small site has been filled to bursting with the 300-seat cinema, a rehearsal studio for the theatre, an art studio, offices and a double height foyer which links the new cinema building to the theatre bar and incorporates a meeting place and refreshments stand. In fact there was so much to be squeezed in to the site that the cinema auditorium is sited underground in a specially excavated basement – not that you feel claustrophobic, the building was designed by architect Tim Foster Associates to maximise the available space.

The £1·7 million project has been part funded by a lottery grant and partly by donations from stars of the stage and screen, including those already mentioned who, in return, get their own seat in the members' box.

Mechanical and electrical contractor FW Cook won the contract for the installation of both m&e services. It subcontracted the electrical package out to Laser of Faversham, Kent.

The 75 A three phase electrical supply to the cinema comes from two different substations; a new one for the cinema and an existing one from the theatre, negating the problem of limited space which stopped services designer Atelier Ten incorporating a standby generator. The two supplies are needed for main and emergency power. If one supply is disabled then a programmable automatic open transition switch, from Asco, flicks over to the second supply. The standby feed powers the critical supplies including alarms and voice evacuation – auditoriums require voice evacuation, rather than the standard alarms – and smoke extract system if the main supply goes down.

The lighting, designed by Light & Design Associates, plays a big part in creating the mood in all areas of the cinema, right from the main entrance to the corridor leading to the toilets, where a combination of imaginative lighting and bright decor is used to good effect.

At night the main entrance is strikingly lit with blue neon signage, a Philips' 150 W HQI floodlight with a blue filter and small compact fluorescent asymmetric floodlights, again with blue filters. Inside, the foyer, decorated white, is virtually all indirectly lit with Wila compact fluorescent lamps which, being positioned down one side of the ceiling, wash the entire east wall with white light. Contrasting this, and complementing the exterior lighting, concealed fluorescent luminaires with blue filters give the ceiling an unearthly blue glow.

Emergency lighting is powered by a 240 V static inverter. This allows the use of a variety of 240 V lamps, including 5 W compact fluorescent lamps which, in some areas, are installed in floorwashers installed about 250 mm above floor level. This type of emergency lighting is in line with current thinking regarding smoke behaviour – smoke rises obscuring ceiling mounted illumination. The emergency exit signs are 240 V and are also a bit special. These are edge-lit, illuminated with a T2 lamp and used throughout the building, although those in the auditorium have a blue filter to reduce brightness. The auditorium is to be used for more than just the screening of films. It is envisaged that seminars and even live performances will be held there. This provides the need for a greater range of illumination. When the lights are fully up, the 100 W par 30 downlights, combined with the linear 24 V xenon strip lamps, set into slots in the walls, give off a bright light. This is controlled in the projection room using a bank of six Strand multi-dim dimmers which have four settings.

The first floor rehearsal studio is lit using a combination of dimmable par 30 downlights set into the high sloping roof and Marlin 70 W CDM wall-mounted uplights. The art studio uses natural daylight as much as possible combined with CDM uplights.

In terms of control of mechanical plant, the project is split into discrete items – there is no overall building management system because the client wanted to keep things simple.

A comfort cooling system for the main cinema area is designed to maintain a temperature of 21oC. It includes supply and extract air handling units with design volumes of 3·9 m3/s – the supply unit incorporates a low temperature hot water (lthw) heating coil and chilled water coil. The projection room has an extract fan, operating at 0·3m3/s.

A standard outside air compensation lthw heating system has been installed throughout the building. Two small ventilation/heat recovery units are included, one in the toilet area next to the cinema and one in the rehearsal room. The rehearsal room is heated via a natural convection floor duct heater.

In case of fire, the cinema box – so called because it is essentially a water tight and virtually soundproof concrete box around which the rest of the building has been built – has a smoke extract system which includes smoke control dampers on all ducts that penetrate the box, making it a completely separate zone from the rest of the building.

The cinema building and the theatre actually share some services, like the chilled water plant. Contractors installed a new R134a chiller to the cinema but then linked it to the existing theatre's chiller. Together they provide cooling to the cinema box, the rehearsal room and the theatre. This rationalisation saves on plant – only one set of chiller pumps, one distribution network – and it provides a back-up facility should one of the chillers fail. The same thinking has been applied to the heating. An existing boiler is now supplemented by a newly-installed one, although the distribution system is split between the two buildings because the existing system is old and it was thought best to leave it alone.

The cinema is a triumph on three counts. Firstly for the support this Kilburn picture house has drawn from stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Barbara Streisand. Second, for its innovative design – fitting so much on the small site and last, but by no means least, because it looks so damn good.