Bíó Paradís

This guide to Bíó Paradís in Reykjavik asks why a 1977 concrete building on Hverfisgata stayed a cinema no matter what happened around it, starting with its life as Regnboginn, the city's first multiplex, engineered from the ground up into several small screening rooms sharing one projection space. It follows the format's rise and its spread into suburban malls, and the awkward architectural fact that sloped, windowless, sound-isolated rooms resist becoming anything else. Stand inside one of its small screening rooms and you are sitting inside an engineering decision made half a century ago.