Brewer plans 45m cinema complex

The uk’s biggest brewer Scottish & Newcastle is involving designers in two major new ventures.

Its leisure department plans a 45m multi-screen cinema complex on Edinburgh brewery site Fountainbridge. It will include cinemas, themed restaurants and bars. Designers will be chosen in eight weeks’ time, and will be expected to produce detailed concepts in a further month.

“We tend not to ask designers to pitch, we usually approach one person on credentials. But it might be different this time,” says a spokeswoman for Scottish & Newcastle.

Meanwhile, Sam Cox, designer at new London consultancy Design Now, has created a logo and architect Andraos Hampson Associates has handled interiors for Café de Paris 1664.

This is the result of a partnership between Café de Paris, a central London bar, and draught lager Kronenbourg 1664, a brand owned by Scottish Courage, which is part of Scottish & Newcastle’s brewery division.

The bar will be relaunched on 12 September. It has been in existence since the 1920s, when it was frequented by Edward VII.

Sam Cox, formerly senior designer at London’s Robert Fairman Associates, set up Design Now with Sara Travers, who was senior account handler at the same consultancy. “We decided to go it alone,” says Cox. Robert Fairman Associates has not yet replaced Cox.