Cruise Reviews, Ship Reviews by The Avid Cruiser

The creative force behind the interior design on all of Carnival Cruise Lines’ ships for the past quarter century, Joe Farcus employs a phrase he coined, “entertainment architecture,” when designing ships.

“When I am designing a ship, essentially I am designing the ship that I would like to be on,” Joe says, sitting at his drawing desk at his home office in Miami Beach.

Pictured here is 1/4 of Joe’s team. That’s right. The firm that has designed (or refitted) more than 40 ships is comprised of just Joe, his wife and two assistants. “The most interesting part of the story is that Carnival still uses the studio approach,” Joe says, explaining that many ship design projects are carried out by firms with up to 100 employees.

Clearly, Joe loves what he does. The first book he bought, at age 11, was on how to draw merchant ships. He signed up to study mechanical drawing in junior high, took college-prep architecture courses in high school, and graduated from the University of Florida with a B.A. in Architecture. Diploma in hand, he took a position with the design firm of Morris Lapidus, creator of such Miami Beach iconic hotels as Fontainebleu, Eden Roc and Americana.

Lapidus’ firm also worked with Carnival on its second ship, Carnivale, where Joe served as the project’s construction manager. When Joe eventually started his own firm, Carnival contracted him to convert a passenger freighter to the cruise ship that would become the Festivale, a revolutionary ship, Joe says, in that if marked the coming of an age where the ship would become the destination.

“It changed the industry. It had so much going on aboard the ship. There was space for everybody and space for everybody to do different things at one time. You didn’t have to maintain the schedule of activities as on earlier ships.”

Tags: Architect, Joe Farcus