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How large should a theatre be to incorporate a center aisle and is a center aisle a good idea?

IMHO, center aisle designs eliminate the best seats in the house.

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services
Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Eastman Kodak Company
Rochester, NY 14650-1922
Telephone: 585-477-5325 Cell: 585-781-4036 Fax: 585-722-7243
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Website: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

We just converted 2 of our 4 remaining houses to continental seating where there is no center isle and there are two isles along the wall. Our big house was already that way. Upon further reflection we should have converted all of our houses to continental style seating. It's much better. We have had a couple of sell-outs in one of the new houses and people had no trouble finding a seat. The room looks much better and we have eliminated 36 undesirable seats next to the wall and converted them in to 36 desirable seats on the isle.

Poppajoe

I agree with John Pytlak - We avoid centre aisles wherever possible. Then again, I'm not sure that Ian's (Large) suggestion is always the best solution either. When we do stadiums, continental seating works great, because the row spacing is generally sufficient to allow people to pass by without everyone standing up. All the major US building codes permit continental seating, but you have to carefully follow the row spacing guidelines. These rules specify how much clearance there is between the back of a seat and the front of the seat behind. This measurement is to the most restrictive point (i.e. if you have cupholder armrests the measurement is to the face of the cupholder). As you increase the rowspacing, you can have progessively more seats between aisles. When you reach 44 inches (typical in most stadiums) the number of seats between aisles is unlimited.