January Extra Blog

Over the course of January my meetings at my mentorship at ACE Program have consisted of finalizing a floor plan design. In our last two meetings there were two groups that worked on the end of the year design (project is to design a movie theater.) One group worked on the internal design of the theaters while the group I was in constructed the exterior structure of the building as well as the layout of the floor plan or how the rooms flowed.

 

 

In the above design we had to first think out the design logically and practical to how a realistic movie theater would flow. For example you don't want the projector room for a theater to be connected with the bathroom you want the projector room to be directly on top of each theater. Although this sounds like common sense it really took some analytical thinking. Another example was that in our ACE project requirements we were only allowed two bathrooms so we as a group thought it would be in our best interest if we placed the bathroom an equal distance away from each theater for the guests to easily access it.

 

This photo above was our finalized first draft, much of what we learned in calculating the square-footage we had to apply to our floor plan design to get the correct number of required square-footage.

 

This picture above illustrates our finalized second draft of our floor plan. In our ACE project requirements we had to establish a restaurant; originally we thought it would be a great feature if we put the restaurant on the second floor, but we ran into a few design problems. The practicality of the restaurant was inadequate, due to the fact that how can users/guests get to the restaurant without having to pay for a movie ticket. We as a group agreed that we would have exterior stairs that would lead up to the restaurant and an elevator for the handicapped. Yet in reality an I-MAX theater screen is at least 60 feet tall and walking sixty flights of stairs is a bit of an exaggeration for practical use. For the end we had to put the restaurant on the group for but decided to face it towards the main street to attract more guest. One of the feature I liked was the patio seating/dining area that faces the main street for an outside city atmosphere for restaurant guests.  

 

What I've learned most from this month was the fact that a practical design is more highly thought of and important than an aesthetic appeal in design.