Reality Rendered
In an age of Netflix parties and Instagram Lives, where our social interactions are lived out bi-focally in both the physical and digital domains, Module K has designed a 1000-seater Beta Cinema in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, that fully embraces this duality.
Module K clinched the win in a design competition against 30 other firms with its iteration – a visual and sensory immersion that begins not just at the roll of the reel, but at the doorstep. To ground its designed fantasy world in the place of origin, the team referenced the geometries of iconic Vietnamese architectural landmarks. Jade Nguyen, Module
K’s director, notes, “The client wanted to convey a message of pride in Saigon landmarks, but not in the usual Indochine style. We wanted to move away from the typical cinema design – dark and moody – so we tried to create a funky and welcoming space with locations for connecting, eating and drinking pre- and post-film showings.”
Traversing Beta Cinema is like an eclectic journey through time in Ho Chi Minh City, beginning with the Ben Thanh Market tower at the main entrance with its symmetrical staircases, and the rhythmic arches of the Saigon Central Post Office, rendered in aqua to house the ticket counters. An array of alternating arches along the hallway corridors captures the intimate granularity of street alleys in Ho Chi Minh City. Asymmetrical arch pillars on the right side of the space are doused in pink, in reference to the rose-coloured Gothic style of the iconic Tan Dinh Church. Pastel pink staircases wrap themselves around bold columns, their stepped forms repeated in balustrades.
The elliptical outline of the central seating area was abstracted from the Saigon Municipal Opera House, clad in hues of navy – a nod to the client’s logo. Overhead, just beneath the Indochine green vaulted ceiling, a flock of pigeons ‘fly’ in a graceful arc – a familiar sight for locals at the Paris Commune Square.
In designing this venue, Module K makes us think: How would one design a cinema today? To what extent should it reflect the contemporary blur between virtual and reality, digital and tangible? Programmatically it makes sense to do so, since to watch a movie at the cinema is to be transported out of one’s reality to inhabit another’s for a few hours — and for the experience to be as reality-suspending and immersive as possible. Words: Felicia Toh, photo: Do Sy.