Archipelago Cinema

The Archipelago Cinema isn’t the first open-air floating cinema that’s ever existed, but it’s certainly the most beautifully situated.

The audience floats in the middle of a serene lagoon in the Strait of Malacca, idly rocking back and forth with the tide, while watching the flickering screen floating on the horizon in front of them. The individual pieces of this floating auditorium are built from buoyant pockets of wood bound together with mosquito nets – a technique pioneered by local fishermen to farm lobsters.

German architect Ole Scheeren, who designed the venue, said he wanted to create, “a sense of temporality, randomness, almost like driftwood. Or maybe something more architectural: Modular pieces, loosely assembled, like a group of little islands that congregate to form an auditorium.”