By Isabella Echevarría-Galarza
To highlight and celebrate IPH’s newest auditorium and expansion space, I sat down with interior designer Scott Weaver to talk about all things inspiration and design. He gave me some background on the main lobby, and all the key details that tie the theater together.
“I wanted to do something that felt colorful and bold and modern and not corporate, because it’s an independent theater. They had already acquired this carpet that was going to be used in their theater spaces. Those colors that you see (along the wall) I pulled straight out of the carpet. The idea of doing stripes originally came from the old school color test. Even though these aren’t the exact colors of a color test, it’s just a meshing of that as a concept with the colors that I chose to work with.”
The lobby’s bright red floor is reminiscent of a red carpet, and ties the room together.
“The building itself had a retro look to it, architecturally. And that sort of informed the decision to go with different style lights and decor,” Scott mentions. The film reels along the wall that lead to the Micro Cinema came from The Manor, an old Charlotte cinema. The tape with the notes are still on them, an extra nod to the movie theater and its history. More historical film details from the city live in the lobby space, including an authentic projector mounted to the wall and custom wallpaper adorned with ads from Charlotte cinemas in the past inside the bathrooms.
The retro look and theme of the theater carries through to the expansion. In the hallway that leads to the new theater there is a wall with movie posters of all kinds.
“This is also that same type of wallpaper design you see in the bathrooms, only it’s different movies, and people associated with the theater were all able to pick a movie.”
We sat down to chat inside the new space. “The reason why this room has furniture but is a little more minimal and these rugs I had made are removable is because this is going to be a multipurpose room,” Scott mentions. “This is called a pre function room. In this room, you could take out the furniture and put classroom chairs and have lectures. Behind me is another screen and the curtain pulls back so if they’re doing anything with Charlotte Film Society they can discuss a movie and display it. Or they can put cocktail tables and do receptions for the film society or a director. Aesthetically speaking I just brought the idea of what I was already doing over there into this room and just really decided that because it was a big room, I wanted to go even bigger and bolder.”
“The aesthetic inspiration is a weird mix of a lot of sort of retro things. I feel that there is an 80’s and early 90’s influence. I feel that there is a 60’s nod, you know? My style is to never do something that’s overly literal–I like to mix and I really wanted it to look bold and graphic. It is a nod to the Memphis design movement that was popular in the 80’s, but it also kinda has a 60’s pop art vibe. You gotta mix it up enough to where something feels retro but together it all feels modern.”
“Why did you feel it’s important to include Charlotte’s film history within this theater?”
“For one thing, I don’t know how the public at large realizes that there is an active Charlotte film society. Not having been raised here as a kid but coming here as a young adult I noticed that for a city that’s as old as Charlotte is–I enjoy history and I like old things and old buildings–I felt that a criticism I’ve always had of Charlotte is its lack of historical preservation. Everything’s constantly new, knock it down, make it bigger. Since it’s just a personal thing with me enjoying the history of places and things I thought, well this is a movie theater, instead of it just being about getting popcorn and watching a movie I knew this place was rooted more in a cinephile’s space. It’s not a commercial theater, the people that are involved in this truly have a passion about film and come from some other theater backgrounds and movie theaters like The Manor that don’t exist anymore. All my design projects incorporate vintage items I find interesting. Nowhere else in Charlotte is there any actual acknowledgement of association with film or cinema history in this town. I wanted this theater to be bold, different, and fun while having nods to the city’s film history. You don’t see a lot of really bold and colorful moves in current design, especially in Charlotte. But, when I was a kid, theaters were wild looking with a lot of color and a lot of everything so I just think it’s a fun nod to go back to the whimsical fun aspect of it.”
What I learned from Scott is that everything in this theater is placed with intent. He notes that if people stop and notice things inside the theater it’ll cause them to ask questions and eventually leave with new pieces of information.
“What is your hope for people with this new space, what do you want them to take away from it? Why do you think it’s so important to uplift local creatives and businesses?”
“I can answer that really easily. I’m a local creative, and I own a local business. If people don’t support what I do I simply cannot do it. So I really appreciate it when I get support. I want to see other local businesses–more now than ever–be supported because it is getting harder and harder to be a small business. We do live in a world where corporations are controlling everything, and it affects my daily life cause I also own a little store in Plaza Midwood called CLTCH. I just think that without a creative community that is nurtured and supported, a city doesn’t really have culture at the end of the day. Art in whichever form it’s being executed marks our history and it shows where we are as a culture at the time. The tapestry of a city that exposes people to new ideas and other cultures, it all boils down to people expressing themselves, and the different art mediums are how that happens. Music, food, clothing, furniture, decor, paintings, photography–all of it. When you really look at every single thing around you it was designed and created by someone, that is an idea that came out of someone’s head. We walk around taking for granted that we depend on creativity and it needs to be brought to the forefront.”