What’s Next: Hospitality

The sector that once seemed to crank out a new Nobu each week has had to learn to make do with less. Much less. To hear David Rockwell, the high priest of chichi hospitality design, tell it, that’s a good thing. “There is a greater opportunity to be more imaginative and experimental with fewer resources,” […]

The sector that once seemed to crank out a new Nobu each week has had to learn to make do with less. Much less. To hear David Rockwell, the high priest of chichi hospitality design, tell it, that’s a good thing. “There is a greater opportunity to be more imaginative and experimental with fewer resources,” says Rockwell, whose portfolio incidentally includes 14 Nobus. Here Rockwell and the French designer Patrick Jouin prognosticate on how hotels and restaurants can survive (and maybe even thrive) in these chancy times.

ONE year:

THE NEIGHBORHOOD APPROACH
“There is a move away from the very big, generic restaurant toward more specific restaurants and cuisine—things that are more an outgrowth of the neighborhood.” —D.R.


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FIVE years:

HOTELS, YOUR NEW CULTURAL AMBASSADORS
“The modern hotel is stuck. It’s still trying to be a safe haven in a city, or it is trying to be its own destination (i.e., Dubai). The hotel can actually take on a different role: to condense, to purify the essence of a place and allow a visitor to not rest on the surface but to penetrate to the core DNA of a place. Can your first taste of a city be something you make with the help of a local chef? Is entertainment a television, or can it be hosting a party, playing a local instrument, or karaoke with a full catalog of Edith Piaf? Instead of taking a bath in what usually feels like a dimly lit closet, can we do this with a view of the city, a glass of champagne, and a friend or two?” —P.J.

TEN years:

PORTABLE GREEN MARKETS
We are doing a project in Abu Dhabi that’s built around the idea of a souk in a market. As opposed to massive retailers, it’s made up of smaller retailers where the duration of lease might be longer.” —D.R.

 
What’s Next: The 1-5-10 Issue
Preservation
Hospitality
Infrastructure
Materials
Public Health
Health Care
Transportation
Workplace
Lighting
Urban Planning
Design Education
Green Building
Energy
Landscape Architecture
Retail

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