Marine scene - Harbour Lights cinema in Ocean Village, Southampton, UK

Southampton's crepuscular waterfront has been enlivened by Harbour Lights, a new cinema complex designed by Burrell Foley Fischer.

When you look at modern Southampton, it is hard to imagine its romantic past. This was once a city indissolubly linked with voyage, with the drama of departure and arrival, and with the names of great ships. Long before the liners of Cunard and P&O were exerting their glamour in the 1930s, the Mayflower had left Southampton in 1620 for North America; and in 1912, the Titanic sailed on her disastrous maiden voyage. It is said that the destruction of so much of the city's historical fabric during the Second World War damaged its seafaring spirit which never really recovered. Whether or not this is so, it is true that the port has gradually declined; and although it still accommodates cruise liners, much of the cross channel ferry business has been transferred to Portsmouth and Dover, leaving empty tracts of waterfront that once were bustling with activity.

One effort by the City Council and Associated British Ports to restore life to the ailing docklands resulted in the development known as Ocean Village. It was masterplanned by Covell Matthews Histon, and the inspiration is plainly the American model of waterside development which proposes variety: shopping mall, restaurants, cafes, dwellings and small offices. Ocean Village should be delightful, spreading as it does around the edge of a marina lively at all times with masts and rigging, but it is largely dispiriting. Southampton's inhabitants seem not to have been drawn to the mall and many of its shops have closed down, while dull office blocks with PoMo trappings stand isolated among car parks.

The exception is Harbour Lights, a new cinema designed by Burrell Foley Fischer. By excavating memory, drawing on the marine context and on the idea of entertainment, the architects have shown what can be done with such a site. Invention was spurred on by Southampton City Council wanted a social, as well as commercial, attraction that would draw people to Ocean Village and encourage them to linger. On the face of it, this seems perverse, for as a building type, the cinema is essentially anti-social in nature, by definition a black windowless void, inimical to a jolly seaside site. But this practice, with previous experience, has overcome the inertia inherent in designing such buildings, and has created something lively and pleasant. Early experience suggests commercial success.

Harbour Lights faces east over the water, set back from the quayside at the head of a ramp. In spite of its rakish appearance, the building is a simple one, constrained by budget and site and architecturally stripped down to essentials. There are two cinema halls separated by a gulley of light that, running from east to west along the whole depth of the building, opens out on the east into a glass foyer (504) with views of the sea, sky and boats. This is traversed at first floor level by a bridge suspended on cables. It links the two cinemas which are entered at this level. Above, are offices, a conference room, and the projectionists' studios, with the various levels connected by a lift (507) enclosed in a glass block shaft (506) and glass stair tower (516). Social, rather than filmic, attractions are the art gallery that has been created in the gulley, the ramp outside which will be used as a public stage for street theatre, and a cafe extension and terrace yet to be built along the south side of the building.

The site dictated a lightweight structure, for the waterfront had once been a slipway. Piled foundations here proved too expensive to contemplate, and as a consequence, the main body of the building occupies the load bearing rear of the site with the steel frame structure cantilevered forward and upwards towards the quay. The interior is expressed externally, and in the process, the architects have employed imagery that is both marine and festive, evoking associations with hulls and prows, and obscurely, with the restraining masts of circus tents. The auditoria were already boat-like in form, with seating (513) raked down to the screen at the rear of the building; and in contriving a foyer that would be an open sociable space, it was decided to accommodate it under their rake and enclose it with glass (504). The underbellies of the auditoria can be read externally in the Vitex timber (518,511) cladding that reminiscent of a hull sweeps up each side of the building to form a giant brise-soleil at second floor level. Beneath, the angled glass wall set behind a row of structural columns is sliced in two by the stair tower projecting like the glass prow of a ship.

Inside, the public areas are full of light. It glances down the sculpted white plasterboard walls (510) of the tall narrow gallery through a glazed ribbon set overhead, with evening light piercing through from the rear west entrance. Pale blue paint (509) on the exposed structure continues the marine association, as does the ticket desk of rusted steel and ship's bridge. In places, on the inside wall of the staircase for example (516), the architects have used brilliant festive colour.