Reviving Cinemas: Fusionista by Oft Interiors Ltd.

Reimagining the Movie-Going Experience with Innovative Interior Design

Oft Interiors Ltd. has breathed new life into an old cinema, transforming it into a high-end, experiential space that caters to the evolving needs of young consumers. The original cinema, no longer suitable for the changing consumption structure and business model, has been revamped to create a unique "experiential consumption scene".

The design team, including CM Jao, Ken Cheung, and Yoyo Au, focused on the profitability of the cinema, which primarily comes from the sale of light food. The design guides consumers to different sales areas, with the lower two floors housing the ticketing area and the outside area, while the upper two floors are dedicated to the movie halls. This layout makes the light food selling area a mandatory passageway to the cinema, encouraging consumption.

The design style is distinctive, with various materials of different colors, textures, and tactile sensations, such as leather, copper, marble brick, steel bar, and more, used to create unique functional spaces. Material properties were carefully considered to ensure the commercial space environment could be continuously maintained and to minimize maintenance costs in the future.

One of the challenges faced by the design team was the building's limitation, which distributed the entire cinema across four different floors, fragmenting the functional areas. The team had to plan all the functional areas reasonably, despite the different area and size of each floor. The project, which started in 2018 in Hong Kong, was completed in 2019.

Fusionista's unique design has earned it the Golden A' Interior Space, Retail and Exhibition Design Award in 2021. This award is granted to marvelous, outstanding, and trendsetting creations that reflect the designer's prodigy and wisdom, venerated products and bright ideas that advance art, science, design, and technology, embodying extraordinary excellence and significantly impacting the world with their desirable characteristics.