Cinema, cinema.

Glamorous lighting and seductive surfaces make the new interior of this cinema complex a hugely enjoyable, almost theatrical experience.

If the name of the Cathay Cinema and Picturehouse in Singapore is evocative of fictional romance, the material series of interiors that link together to make up the new complex are hugely entertaining. The cinema part of the complex includes two halls converted from the single one of the old Cathay Cinema house in the Cathay Building, the first skyscraper ever built in Singapore. The Picturehouse is contained in an adjoining annexe and provides another cinema hall with a stage, and two cafes. A main lobby, with an existing grand staircas and box office, provides access to all three cinemas.

In their design of the complex, the architects, Bedmar & Shi, have seized with great enthusiasm on the kinetic and narrative powers of the cinema, as well as its element of fantasy, as sources of inspiration. By using materials to sugges glamour and excitement, by deploying exuberant colours and dynamic forms, the architects have created a kind of cinematic funfair in three dimensions: a number of shows linked by festive paths and defined by shimmering, shifting surfaces and ripples of light, corrugations and odd geometries. The kineticism experienced in three dimensions can be seen reflected in the restless plans.

Where possible, the architects have worked with, rather than against, what existed, and given cogent functional reasons for apparently wilful design. For example, the awkwardly shaped main and ancillary lobbies have had their perimeters redesigned without making radical changes to the spaces. An external wall composed of alternating glass and opaque panels has been concertinaed to allow tantalising glimpses of the interior from the street; similar angling of box-office windows is designed to encourage queues to form naturally along the length of the long, thin lobby. Attendant boredom can be alleviated by the bank of TV screens broadcasting film trailers overhead and by a march of yellow frames around advertisements for forthcoming attractions. The lighting is glamorous, as is the lustrous stainless steel: the walls of the grand staircase are clad with angled strips of it, while stainless steel panels enclose walls and columns that swell outwards from the base and are lit around the top as if wreathed by incandescence. A diamond motif designed to a square grid rotated 45-degrees, chosen for its dynamic properties when used over large areas, appears in the curved stainless steel wall of the lobby to Cinema 1, and recurs in the pattern of the acoustically panelled walls, coloured gold, of Cinema 1's auditorium. In the Picturehouse, the assymetrical lines of dark blue acoustic panelling streaking across the walls under a billowing ceiling are intended to disturb perspective. There is a sublimal sense of a regular box being pulled apart and distorted into fantastical shape an apt metaphor for the movies.