White Mark designs new preview theatres for NBC Universal

With NBC Universal’s new home – London’s award-winning Central Saint Giles offices – in need of a full refurbishment, studio design and acoustic consultancy company White Mark were hired and tasked with designing two state of the art preview theatres for their executive and private screenings.

White Mark recruited architects T P Bennett and cinema optics consultant Lawrence Claydon to help erect the 64-seat, double height screening room on the ground floor, with a smaller 18-seat theatre built on the next floor.

David Hodgkinson, senior vice president of Theatrical Operations at NBC Universal, said: “We chose White Mark for this project on the basis of the company’s excellent worldwide reputation for designing sonically accurate film dubbing theatres and post production facilities, and we’re delighted with the end result.”

David Bell, manager of White Mark, added: “This was a complex project because of the lightweight construction of the building and the fact that we were working within very tight space constraints. It was imperative that both theatres had excellent acoustic isolation.

“We built each theatre within its own steel isolation shell and placed these on top of each other to effectively create a theatre stack. We paid careful attention to the room acoustics to make sure these theatres were as accurate as the professional film dubbing rooms in which soundtracks are mixed.”

With NBC impressed with the outcome of their theatres. White Mark has since returned to the company to design a range of technical facilities, including audio and visual editing suites.

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