Joe Farcus is one of the most famous cruise ship interior architects having designed the interiors of over 50 cruise ships starting with the Carnivale for Carnival Cruise Line in 1975
Farcus had always had a keen interest in ships and airplanes, but started his career designing buildings in the early 70’s. Ted Arison, founder of Carnival Cruise Line was a client of the firm Farcus worked for at the time and he had Farcus doing a hotel project for him.
Later, in1975, Farcus was the project manager for Arison’s second Carnival Cruise Line’s vessel the Carnivale. He supervised the vessel’s refurbishment.
Later in 1975 after a disagreement with his employer, Farcus started his own firm. Then he learned Ted Arison wanted to expand his cruise line and was looking for a third ship.
After Arison had acquired Transvaal Castle (built1961) from Union Castle Line wich needed to be converted from liner to cruise ship, he immediately offered his services, presented him his plans and was hired. This was the beginning of a long term commitment to Carnival Cruises Corp. for over 40 years with Ted Arison and later with his son Micky. Transvaal Castle originally was a passenger ship with considerable freight carrying capacity, a so callled combination liner and she needed to be converted to a cruise ship. Her restaurant needed to be expanded and a main theatre created. The job was finally awarded to a Japanese firm with Joe Farcus as the leading architect. It was there Farcus started designing unique onboard entertainment venues which would become his trademark.
According to Farcus the Festivale -ex Transvaal Castle was the first “real cruiseship” where “the ship was the destination” and the ports of call were less important.
Joe Farcus worked on 50 plus ships for Carnival Cruise Line, Costa Cruises, Holland America Line and Cunard over the years, most of them newbuildings, others conversions like the early Carnival vessels.
“Most large cruise ships, – smaller luxury and expedition ships excluded of course – today follow this principle where the ship is the destination and we were the inventors of this concept”, according to Farcus. Later he would describe it as “entertainment architecture”.
For each ship, Farcus thought of a unique theme for its interiors so he would not repeat designs. For his first newbuildings Jubilee and Celebration, he initially just wanted to design a contemporary interior for both, but when trying to differentiate and create two different ships in the process this developed into a theme for each ship. For example for one of his later interior designs for Carnival Conquest (2002) the theme was Impressionist Painters, one of Farcus’ favourites.
Farcus always started the design process with some ideas he translated into concept drawings which when finalised would ultimately end up at the shipyard and its subcontractors actually building the designs. Show samples and mock-ups were presentd to Farcus first who had to accept them on behalf of his client Carnival.
Unfortunately not all of Farcus plans could be materialised, the ship of the future designed together with Fincantieri and later the smaller version created with input from Masa Yards both were designed but unfortunately cancelled because of the extremely high building and operating costs. These groundbreaking mega cruise liners of the future were simply to expensive for Carnival to go ahead with the project. Another new design followed at the time the Carnival Destiny was on the drawing boards as Ted Arison wanted something more spectacular than Destiny‘s -although she was the first cruise ship measuring over 100.,000 GT- “standard” design. This new vessel was strikingly similar to Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas. But it dated from 20 years earlier… It featured 2 towers along the length of the vessel with an open area in between, measuring 135,000 -150,000 GT. Carnival thought such a vessel was too big to build and expensive to operate and this project also did not proceed. One of its features, the glass front of the funnel as the top of the 10 deck atrium was later realised in Carnival Spirit and Carnival Miracle.
For his first newly built ship Tropicale in 1981, Ted Arison asked Farcus to design a hallmark funnel for Carnival Cruise Line. As an airplane as well as shipping enthousiast, Farcus thought that the principle of vacuum created on top of the wings of an airplane could also help in lifting smoke off the decks of a ship and he designed a funnel with wings on top of both sides. The Danish shipyard building Tropicale thought it would never work but windtunnel tests proved them wrong. It was realised on Tropicale and has been used on every Carnival ship to date. Farcus’ revolutionary funnel has been compared to France/ Norway’s funnel which also had wings, but internally these worked completely different as a shutter could be used to divert smoke from the top to the sides of the funnel.
Apart from being an interior designer and a licensed architect before he started working on cruise ships, Farcus also was a hands-on technician with a profound knowledge of cruise ship operations, technology, shipbuilding, architecture and human behaviors, If the shipyard told him his designs couldn’t be realised, he could convince them by showing how it could be done technically. His technical drawings were hand-made but in exact scale and proportion.
Of course, Farcus is mostly known for hiss colourful glitzy Las Vegas style interios of which his colourful atriums are spectacular examples. His style was unique as his designs always were original, no copies of exisiting styles. He never reused his ideas, the ambiance of every space was unique within the specific theme of the vessel on hand.
Joe Farcus probably is the interior architect having the most impact on cruiseship interior design in the sense that he lifted the passenger ship as it was known before the 1970’s to a higher level as it was no longer a mode of transportation – albeit a luxury one in most cases – between interesting ports, but now was the destination in itself, a concept universally followed in today’s mega cruiseships.
