Getting into character

摘要

It helps to have known a building before you assess its transformation, and I knew this one. The Crouch End Picturehouse in north London, a five-screen 604-seat cinema designed by Panter Hudspith, re-uses and reveals the structure of what was previously a respectable piece of postwar bomb site infill: a well-proportioned concrete-framed, curtain-walled office building with a broad five-bay street frontage. But the building was perched up on its pilotis, left void at ground level for car parking, giving nothing to the life of the street. This has now changed.