Le Temple, renewal

The starting point

The venue was trading, but the Earth room was becoming familiar to its local audience, which is the audience that comes back. An action game room is played once. Once the core customers have done it, it stops earning.

This is the most common situation in the sector, and the worst handled. Many operators wait for admissions to drop sharply before acting. By then it is no longer renewal, it is recovery.

The design decision

Do not rebuild everything. Strip out one room in four, the Earth room, and replace it with a new one, the Lightning room: new story, new scenography, new mechanisms.

The venue stayed open during works, the other three rooms kept trading, and the opening of the Lightning room served as a commercial event.

A well-announced partial renewal generates more admissions than a full rebuild announced six months too late.

The design work

Lightning takes Earth's place in the grammar set at opening.

The Lightning room is played on aim and speed. Viracocha, creator god and king of storms, throws a last challenge at the warriors who have mastered the other elements. Players aim at holes cut into the god's motif: only the lit ones count, and the smallest ones score highest.

The drawing settles everything before the first cut: the motif, the size and position of every target, the sloping floor that returns the balls to the players, the tray that collects them, and the barrier that separates the throwing zone from the play zone.

That is the value of a structured world. One of its terms can be replaced without the venue having to be explained again to its audience, and without touching the other three rooms.

The build

Works carried out outside trading hours, keeping access to the other rooms and public circulation intact.

The result

What Pix did, exactly

Operating diagnosis, scoping of the renewal, stripping out of the Earth room, writing of the new story, art direction and delivery of the Lightning room.