Vue Cinema, White City

United Kingdom

Main Contractor

Bridgford Interiors

Cinema operator

VUE

Key Facts

14 screen cinema

551 Isolators for the raked seating structure

1648m of FAVIM supplied under walls

1646m² of Isomat Floating floors

6732 Isomat Isolators

581m² of screed

172m³ of concrete

Max pour distance: 230m from pump located 30m below

The Challenge

Westfield Shopping Centre in White City, London was developed at a cost of £1.6 billion and at the time of its opening it was reported to be the largest urban shopping centre in Europe with a retail area of more than 1.5 million square feet. Following a direct recommendation from Laing O’Rourke (with whom we had worked on a similar project in Bury) we were contacted by Bridgfords and invited to design and supply a suitable isolation system for the 14 screen VUE cinema due to be built directly above the already fully operational shopping centre.

The cinema would require a box in box system with the internal acoustic walls installed around the perimeter of the floating floors. Each screen was a different size and shape meaning that each would again require bespoke design. There would also be a critical decision over whether to put the floors in at the beginning of the build programme or at the end – this would be geared around balancing the advantage of having a blank canvas without the need to work around a completed internal cinema structure.

The Solution

Farrat applied a systematic approach comprising of a solution for each element of the application. It was decided that the
floors should go in last to reduce the risk of overloading or damage to the power floated finish, to make it easier to move equipment around the site (having one floor level) and to minimise the need for temporary perimeter formwork during the construction of the floors.

Raked seating structure

Farrat took the un-factored loadings from the structural engineer and the baseplate sizes as designed by the steelwork contractors to place the correct isolator type at each location to ensure the overall performance met the acoustic consultant’s requirements. This was an intensive process partly through time constraints but also the amount of isolators per screen. On average there were 36 isolators per auditorium and 16 auditoria.

We scheduled deliveries to be in line with Bridgford’s installation schedule and for each auditorium we provided a marked up drawing showing which bearing should be positioned in which location. Each acoustic bearing pad was individually labelled and AWTH acoustic washers were then packed as a kit for each auditorium. This all proved to be a valuable service to the client, making sure no mistakes were made and shortening installation time.

Walls

At the same time as the seating steelwork was being installed the perimeter acoustic walls were being erected. To provide the acoustic performance FAVIM strips were used to support the walls comprising of studwork channels, acoustic plasterboard panels and mineral wool. There were a number of different wall types depending on the location and in each case we calculated the width of strip required, length of each wall type required and the quantity of AWTH acoustic washers with integrated bushes. All these items were packed for easy identification to speed up installation time on site.

Floors

The final part of the process was to install the Isomat Acoustic Floating Floors chosen for the ease, speed and flexibility of installation. We created accurate installation drawings for each auditorium showing exact isolator and formwork locations and quantities. For the entrance ramps to each auditorium we created reinforced screed ramps which were isolated using FAVIM full area acoustic isolation material where the top of the ramp met the Isomat floating floor system.

The site had started out as an empty box but it had been provisionally screeded to another cinema operator’s layout. VUE’s architects had done an excellent job of mapping out where screed needed to be removed and added and we took this information and undertook this work alongside the entrance ramp screeding.

We overcame a key challenge in that access for all materials was through one set of double doors on the roof via a crane (if available) or hoist. This prompted the decision to use fibre reinforced concrete rather than mesh reinforcement as it would have taken too much time to get the mesh into the building.

The concrete pour was successfully completed in the scheduled 5 days. The concrete had to be pumped 30m up (being careful not to damage the finished building façade) and up to 200m into the building navigating through the network of auditoria entrance corridors. For such a long pipeline we used a compressor to push the excess concrete out of the pipeline to minimise concrete waste.