Residents of Quezon City and neighboring areas do not have to travel to the south of Metro Manila to experience state-of-art, three-dimension (3D) digital movie entertainment. This as the Ayala-owned Triangle North of Manila (TriNoma) shopping complex has formally unveiled its Digital 3D Cinema last week.
 
TriNoma refurbished its existing Cinema 4 to become its Digital 3D Cinema, equipped with the latest Dolby 3D Cinema technology. With the upgrade, audiences can enjoy brilliant images, and clear surround sound when they watch movies.



"At Ayala Malls Cinemas, we are constantly on the lookout for the latest innovation to give our patrons a movie-watching experience that is relevant to their lifestyle," Amir Precilla, Ayala Malls Cinemas general manager, said in a statement.

source: http://www.bworldonline.com/BW070709/content.php?id=161&src=2

Dolby 3D Digital Cinema: http://www.dolby.com/professional/motion_picture/technologies/dolby-3ddigital.html

MANILA, Philippines—Ayala Malls, known for innovative retail developments, creating well-planned lifestyle centers, and building beyond commercial spaces, has won three awards from the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC).

ICSC announced and handed the awards during the gala awards rites on October 15 at the ICSC Asia Expo in Macau.

ICSC has recognized and honored the shopping center industry’s most cutting-edge properties, innovative solutions and creative responses to market trends, as well as outstanding examples of design and development throughout the world.

Ayala Malls received top recognition under the categories of Design & Development and Marketing.

“Bravo Filipino: A Tribute to Filipino’s Creativity and Ingenuity,” which featured a four-month long festival celebrating the Filipino creative genius during the opening of Greenbelt 5 garnered a Gold award for Marketing excellence.

Bonifacio High Street, the country’s first “main street” development, and Trinoma, offering a refreshing and rewarding shopping experience in northern Metro Manila, won for Ayala Malls a Gold and Silver award, respectively, for outstanding design qualities and creativity in development.



Source: http://globalnation.inquirer.net/news/breakingnews/view/20081022-167898/Ayala-Malls-bags-3-awards

Photo Credits: http://sasha-says.com/2007/11/10/weekend-snapshot-8/

Manila Standard
20 July 2008 | 11:30 PM

By Isah V. Red

MALL cinemas are racing to build expensive theaters with stadium-style seating, the arrangement film buffs seem to prefer because they see the screen wherever they’re seated.

The race heated up after a new kid on the block, Ayala’s Trinoma, beat longtime leader SM North Edsa with its seven-screen multiplex and their stadium configuration. It signaled that the auditorium style that Henry Sy used to draw the hordes to his malls may have outlived its usefulness, and Trinoma’s box office receipts show it. During this month’s first weekend alone, for instance, Trinoma’s multiplex contributed P2.37 million to the P36.21 million that the movie Hancock grossed in four days, beating SM North Edsa’s P1.61-million take.

Trinoma’s success surprises even Ayala Cinema’s Rollie Dueñas. “We didn’t expect us to be the theaters of choice among the market in Quezon City, considering there are other theaters nearby” Dueñas says of his multiplex whose tickets are priced P20 higher than SM North’s. “We’re glad we’re doing well-especially with the English-language films.”

A spokesman for Hancock’s distributors says Trinoma’s theaters are drawing the crowds because of the mall’s access to the commuter trains serving the Monumento-Baclaran sector, its taxi bays, and its bus and jeepney stops.

Ric Camaligan, vice president of SM Leisures, acknowledges that Trinoma has overtaken SM City North Edsa in movie ticket sales. “The mall is new and as we know, we like to try what’s new,” he says.

Implicitly, Camaligan acknowledged that the stadium style may have been winning the ticket war when he said the new SM City Marikina would have stadium-style seating. The Sys’ other theaters face fixing up as well.

“We’re retooling some,” Camaligan says. “We’ve converted one of the theaters in The Block [on SM North] into a digital 3D screen, a downsized version of the IMAX at the SM Mall of Asia. We also added digital projection in some of our theaters to accommodate digital films.”

HE Sys’ reconfiguration of their multiplexes represents some sort of admission that they might have failed to read their market or the competition or both. Indeed, the market leader that brought down the cinema palaces on Rizal Avenue and Aurora Boulevard and Cubao in Quezon City—the cinemas that ruled the roost from the 1950s up to the late 1970s—is now following trends instead of starting them.

Sy brought down the movie palaces when he offered theaters at the SM City North Edsa with state-of-the-art sound and wide screens in 1983. Dispensing with the balcony, but retaining the orchestra and loge sections of the old cinema palace, he introduced the auditorium style of seating in the mall’s eight theaters, and then added four more five years later to present the biggest multiplex in the country.

SM North Edsa became the template for other developers wanting to ensure a constant flow of human traffic in their malls, and it just grew and grew. It eventually offered 50,000 seats to become the biggest theater circuit in the country, so that one simultaneous screening means P26 million in gross receipts at P130 per ticket in just one day.

The multiplexes at the SM malls reigned, but the competition eventually wised up. As if on cue, the Power Plant in Rockwell, the Shangri-La Plaza in Mandaluyong, and the Gateway in Quezon City rejected the auditorium style in favor of the stadium in building their cinemas. The Robinsons malls in Manila and Mandaluyong reconfigured their auditoriums into stadiums, and three years ago the Aranetas built a spanking multiplex with 10 screens on top of Gateway Mall—one of those a premium theater exclusive to Globe Platinum members, and with La-Z-Boy seats.

The SM group finally took notice when Trinoma, the new high-end mall just across the street, embraced the stadium design and got the crowds coming. The group had initially ignored the trend, saying its theaters were meant for a market that did not really care about technological advances in movie exhibition like digital surround. Now it’s having second thoughts about it.

Still, while the auditorium style of seating in multiplexes may have been out of fashion, Camaligan of SM Leisures says SM is not about to plunge into a wholesale reconfiguration of its existing cinemas. That will require some serious study, he says, because a new theater with state-of-the-art projection and sound means millions of pesos in investment.

“That’s a lot of money at a time when the movie industry worldwide is going through difficult times,” he says.

Link
http://www.yehey.com/news/Article.aspx?id=220497

By Cheche Moral
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 03:58:00 06/08/2008


MANILA, Philippines - It was a running joke among the Keng and Cheng families that if they ever opened a new branch of The Landmark, it would be the best department store and supermarket in the Philippines.

“No, the best in the world,” one of them would say, and they would all end up laughing about how grand, and perhaps unattainable, that sounded.

It seems the joke was on them, as their newest baby, The Landmark Trinoma, was recently chosen Store of the Year by the Florida, USA-based Association for Retail Environments, and first place in the Supermarket/Grocery category by the Institute of Store Planners/ VM+SD International Store Design Competition.

The award was given by the ISP and the retail design industry professionals’ magazine Visual Merchandising + Store Design. Its designer, Montclair, New Jersey’s Hugh A. Boyd Architects, was also cited for Innovative Store Planning.

Landmark Corp. took the slow but sure route to opening a sister-branch to its Makati store, taking 20 long years to open the doors to its bigger, far grander branch located farther north of the metropolis, in Trinoma, Quezon City.

“We had ongoing plans to expand,” said Kenneth Keng, assistant to the vice president, and son of one of The Landmark’s founders. “But something always came up, like a coup or something else. Each passing year we made sure that if ever we did get a chance to open another store, it had to be really dramatic, light years beyond whatever we had in Makati.”

When the opportunity presented itself, the company tapped Hugh A. Boyd Architects to design its supermarket, and Callison Architecture Inc. for the department store, the latter having worked with Ayala for the Greenbelt project.

“What was here compared to what the rest of the world had was probably 10 years behind,” Keng said. “We wanted something that was up-to-date with the rest of the world. It had to be spacious since Filipinos shop as a family. We wanted to make sure kids had a space to run around.”

The Landmark in Trinoma measures over 15,000 sq m on each of its four levels, or about 150 percent bigger than the Makati branch.

“There were many ways we could’ve saved a few pesos here and there, but we figured the customers would expect something different so we went all out,” Keng said. Three elevators connect all levels, while a moving ramp was installed to give supermarket shoppers direct access to the parking lots.

The store can be accessed from several points, giving equal consideration to both commuting and car-owning patrons: on the main supermarket entrance on Mindanao Avenue, where there’s a taxi and FX stand; the department store lobby from Trinoma Mall, directly from the MRT station; and from the multilevel parking entrances.

“We had very impassioned arguments with our designers. They explained to us that what they were doing was different from what we were used to,” Keng said.

For instance, the preparation areas for produce, meat, poultry and seafood is open so that shoppers could see how clean and sterile the merchandise is prepared. The owners, who were initially doubtful that the unpleasant odor in the fish section could be totally eliminated, are pleased that their new drainage and refrigeration system from Singapore has dealt with that problem.

The supermarket’s sleek design marries aesthetics with function, characterized by undulating lines of refrigeration pods housing meats, poultry and seafood. The design is repeated throughout as fresh fruits and vegetables are housed in oval and round glass-encased islands.

There are 40-50 checkout counters so that lines never get too long. Unlike other supermarkets, dedicated baggers are assigned to assist shoppers at every counter. All counters are equipped with conveyor belts for more convenient handling.

All logos of concessionaires in the food court are uniformly carved in wood. Tables by Corian are scratch-resistant, Keng said, and all the chairs were imported from Australia.

“In Makati, we are constrained by space. Here we can experiment. So customers can get brands they won’t find in other stores at prices they won’t find in other stores,” he added.

The department store on the three upper levels has two full atriums on opposite ends with skylights. An area called Bazaar occupies a vast expanse on one side for “shoppers who like the tiangge experience. Others have this, too, but for us we made sure that it isn’t in a forgotten corner of the store where the floorings aren’t even finished.”

Its longtime tenant in Makati, Café Via Mare, is now joined by Bread Talk in Trinoma, with another coffee shop to open soon.

Buoyed by the response of their Trinoma patrons, Keng said the Makati branch begins a major renovation this month.

“We won’t be demolishing the building but we’re going all the way in Makati, even better than what we’ve done with Trinoma. Makati will always be Makati. We are still doing good even after the explosion in Glorietta. And we do best when we compete directly.”

http://showbizandstyle.inquirer.net/lifestyle/lifestyle/view/20080608-141429/Landmark-award-for-local-store