Juror Award
Muvico Paradise 24 Theater
Location
Davie, Florida
Client
Muvico Theaters
Design Firm
Development Design Group
Design Team
Jim Andreone (Principal in Charge), Janey Gregory, Kevin Kern, Valerie Knauff, Jose Morales, Curtiss Taylor, Ilona Stevens, Ian Webster
Fabricators
Don Bell Industries, Penwal Industries
Consultant
Magical Event Productions (lighting)
Paradise 24 is a 97,000-square-foot, 24-screen cineplex, offering an immersive Egyptian experience. The sloped, battered walls and distressed patina lend the ambiance of the ancient temple at Karnak. The cinema features a north wing reminiscent of the sandy, desert-like upper Nile and a south wing themed as the more lush delta plain. Statues of Ramses and sphinxes guard the concessions, which are located at the end of an indoor/outdoor mosaic of the Nile. Cinema patrons drive in past a huge entry pylon, and then park in the Luxor, Delta or Nile lots. Wayfinding signage and murals are colored in traditional Egyptian pottery hues, and wall surfaces feature quasi-hieroglyphics.
Jury Comment
A veritable Aida of graphic design, from the lotus capital to the charming pseudo-hieroglyphics that cover the interior, to the floor mosaic of the River Nile that flows toward the viewing screens, the "Paradise 24" is a Egyptoid fantasy, on a par with the great American movie palaces of the 1920s, which ran the gamut from splendor-of-Versailles curlicues to Aztec pyramid moderne. The theater itself is part o the fantasy experience created by movies which transport the viewer from Davie, Florida to a dreamscape of Hollywood's own creation.