I used to live in Nashville (1975-1982) and now live 5 hours east on I-40. Is the MetroCenter really as barren as you say? I worked at WZTV at their old location at 38th Av. and Charlotte Pike. When I left, they were preparing for the move to MetroCenter. I guess they are still there, too? The old Skyway Drive In was my haunt in 1977 when I ran Star Wars every night.

Is the Belcourt theatre still near Vanderbilt U? I think I heard that the Tennessee Theater downtown bit the dust a few years back, like the old Sam Davis Hotel did. (Ka-BOOM)

Bruce...
Fountain Square is "really" as dead as I claimed.

The Belcourt "almost" got torn down last year, but a group of "art-film lovers" saved it and now runs it strictly as an art-house. They've got a web-site, but I can't remember the domain.
The old Tennessee theater on Church street was torn down in 1986 to make way for a 20 story "luxury condo/apartment" building. I've got some photos of the Tennessee before it was torn down.

You mentioned the old "Sam Davis Hotel". I currently work for an engineering firm in Nashville, and we have one of the original solid-oak fully enclosed phone booths from the lobby of the Sam Davis in our lobby.

The URL is http://home.hiwaay.net/~criswell/theatre/images/nashville/ (Not linked into my main site.)

If you want to know the general condition of MetroCenter, take a look at this theatre. The wide shot I provided links to a much larger version of the picture. For my movie, I'd like the Sicily Caesar Pizza and Pasta auditorium, please! There appear to be several office type buildings in use, and most of the food places in the area probably survive by providing convenient lunch places for the office workers. Fountain Square Mall looks mostly empty, and it appears that many of the spaces in use are not stores, but are offices for businesses.

By the way, the Cinema South picture I put up was taken at night with the shutter open for 2 seconds. The ones taken at 1 second showed "The Outer Limit" on the sign, but the auditoriums did not show up well.

Evans http://home.hiwaay.net/~criswell/theatre/

Octagons (or extended octagons) come together in quite neat ways. I couldn't find my 30-60-90 drafting triangle, so I haven't toyed with hexagons yet. Hexagons tile the plane, so some neat things might happen with them. With octagons, it is possible to build a structure with minimal sound bleed-through, while not having such a ridiculous amount of rectangular wall, while having a centralized booth and lobby. However, it is hard to have more than 6 or 7 auditoriums without losing the centralized booth or lobby. Maybe that's why the "pod" design went out when the number of auditoriums per theatre went up.

Comments? Ideas for cool or non-conventional multiplex designs?

The common wall(s) do share the same poured footing, but then each wall starts with it's own poured (or concrete block) base. The studs (usually steel, nowadays) is built up from there, and there's no mechanical connection between the two until the wall reaches the roof.

The pod idea is a really good one, but probably just too expensive. It's not just the walls, there would be higher costs for several other things, like ducting, roof grid, etc. If the pod idea gives you a (say) 100% sound isolation, constructing the footing as I described might give you (say) 92%, but the cost would be much, much lower.

And, of course, it seems the avaiable property is never in an ideal shape for what you want.

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