“My whole success is that I have always designed for people, first because I wanted to sell them goods. Then when I started in hotels, I had to think again: 'What am I selling now? You are selling something good time.'” – Morris Lapidus (1902–2001), architect
N Next month, immediately after the release of our 400 company America's Best Residential Architects in the State List, Forbes will publish the result of an equally rigorous assessment: our opening speech America's Best Hotel Architects and Designers. The list consists of 100 companies and is intended to serve all individuals and organizations involved in the $1.7 trillion U.S. hotel industry. It identifies the country's leading design innovators in hotels, restaurants, wineries, and spa and wellness retreats.
In our effort to identify both hospitality design innovation and its key players, we have narrowed the focus of this list to the fine-dining and luxury segments – the tiers of greatest economic resilience. While other segments of the industry have struggled to recover from the pandemic, fine dining continues to experience robust growth despite rising food and labor costs and profit margins that rarely exceed 5%, with industry revenue expected to reach $17.2 billion by year-end. The luxury hotel industry also continues to record growth: the current market size of 42.75 billion US dollars is expected to grow to 62.22 billion US dollars by 2030. Therefore, it is no surprise that this is where the state of the art lies and the latest progressive design concepts come from here.
Still, determining the “state of the art” depends on context, and in a culture that is increasingly shape-shifting through the isolation of our portable technological devices, the immersive and transformative public environments created by this group of architects and designers call us into the physical world. Her work is characterized by its excellence as innovative “high design”. But more important is how these architects and designers and their choreographed environments make us stay in touch with the joys of community and the seriousness of a sense of place.
To this end, This is the first time ever Forbes List of top architects and designers led by Forbes Managing editor Richard Olsen and deputy editor Fred Albert are based on rigorous journalistic research and assessments. Free entry fee Forbes The list is open to the entire field of architecture and design practice in the hospitality industry.
Nepenthe's architectural and design concept, its sublime, robust simplicity, has proven to be a model of sustainability and has so far stood the test of 76 years of consistent service. The redwood benches and modest but durable furniture, all enlivened by the owners' penchant for bold pops of color, deliberately defy the industry's wasteful reputation for replacing furniture every seven years on average. ABOVE: Nepenthe's redwood and adobe bar has been a meeting place for a long list of artists, writers, actors and other creatives, including Salvador Dali, Henry Miller, Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood and Joan Baez.
Richard Olsen
To qualify for the initial inclusion on the list, companies first had to demonstrate a proven track record of implementing hospitality projects and have an office in at least one of the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. More than 850 companies did this and in return received careful scrutiny of their online portfolios and published work. As part of this project, we spent eight months researching national, international and regional architecture and design magazines and websites; examined the entry processes and results of competitions conducted by local and national associations of the American Institute of Architects and the American Society of Interior Designers; and closely tracked awards and recognition programs, past and present, conducted by trade organizations.
As with everyone Forbes Previous architectural lists, participation by invitation only; The outcome of the list would be assessed on the basis of the work actually completed.
Those companies whose work generally met requirements through this first round of assessment Forbes Architectural Criteria invited an “exemplary” project completed in 2019 or later to be submitted for further evaluation. Each submission was then evaluated accordingly Forbes Architecture System of Evaluation, a two-tier, 12-category system of guiding principles and best practices. The publication of our opening speech America's Best Hotel Architects and Designers The list will reveal the result – the most modern American hotel architecture and design in 2026.
ABOVE: Overlooking artist Edmund Kara's wood and bronze Phoenix bird sculpture and the Santa Lucia Mountains, Nepenthe's fire pit features tile and a Big Sur jade mosaic, the work of several generations of the restaurant's family owners. Original artworks, including the oil paintings of contemporary artists Kaffe Fassett and Erin Lee Gafill, have always been an integral part of Nepenthe's overall aesthetic and atmosphere and a way to deepen the connections between built space and cultural place.
RICHARD OLSEN
ABOVE: When it opened in 1949, the restaurant and bar, with its incomparable seaside terrace, gained instant fame as a meeting place for Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Kerouac and other poets, writers, artists and musicians of the San Francisco beat scene, before being featured in the 1964 film The Sandpiper by Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton became famous. Nowadays, during peak season, when Silicon Valley is amassing more real estate in Big Sur and social platforms are shedding even more light on the place's countless photogenic natural features, the restaurant's popularity results in a staggering 450 lunches and 200 dinners daily.
Richard Olsen
Rating System: America's Best Hotel Architects and Designers
LEVEL 1: General professional assessment (3 categories)
1. Integrity of the online presence (quality of photography; professionalism of presentation; information value; awards; publication history; etc.)
2. Educational background of the company directors
3. Work experiences and mentoring
LEVEL 2: Review of a single “exemplary” hotel, restaurant, winery or spa and wellness retreat
PART 1, General characteristics of architecture and design:
Category 1: Stability
Category 2: Utility
Category 3: Beauty
PART 2, Specific features of architecture and design (6 category “Forbes Architecture GASTRONOMY ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN – Guiding principles and best practices”):
1. Architecture: location and local context
2. Architecture: Responsibility and Performance
3. Interiors: material selection and application, arts and crafts
4. Interiors: Furniture
5. Interiors: Light and lighting
6. Indoors: Physical and psychological effects
Regularly in demand is the flexibility of Maiden's open floor plan, with its front and rear concrete slab terraces that allow the dining area to grow into nature, more than doubling Nepenthe's capacity. ABOVE: Near the rear patio is a dining nook framed by the architecture's recreated redwood trusses, a nod to Wright's Taliesin West in Arizona but with local wood just as appropriate as realized here, offering guests an ambience of intimacy and magical coastal views.
Richard Olsen
The 6-category system in detail:
1. Architecture: location and local context
- Respects the defining environmental and cultural characteristics of its site and minimizes disruptive impacts
- Adapted for current climate extremes, sea level rise, flood risk forecasts and wildfires (both within and outside the Wildland-Urban Interface Zone)
2. Architecture: Responsibility and Performance
- Advocates for adaptive reuse rather than demolition and new construction
- Contains provisions on circularity of building materials
- Meets high performance building envelope standards with particular emphasis on pressure control and moisture flow control to prevent mold
- Achieves the rating for the verification of healthy buildings for the indoor climate (air, water, hygiene, light, acoustics), such as: B. the UL Verified Healthy Building Mark for new buildings
- Appropriate green infrastructure practices
3. Interiors: material selection and application, arts and crafts
- Research-based selection approach with emphasis on the importance of the “relationship” of each material to the place and theme (predominant use of indigenous and locally sourced or repurposed materials)
- For wood and wood products: Forest Stewardship Council certified
- For fabrics and textiles, Certified Green Products and/or Global Organic Textile Standard products have priority
- A holistic focus on art and craft to articulate the theme
- Employing local artists and craftsmen
4. Interiors: Furniture
- Attention to the curation of antiques and collectibles and/or project-specific custom-made items, each thematically congruent
5. Interiors: Light and lighting
- Attention to the creative capture of natural light and the use of its behavioral possibilities in all spaces and scenarios
- Conception of comprehensive original lighting strategies, implemented with thematically appropriate historical lights and/or custom-made products – all designed to complement the natural lighting strategies of the interior
6. Indoors: Physical and psychological effects
- Creates a feeling of comfort and security
- Promotes/facilitates the pursuit of “wellness”
- Through the use of storytelling design tools (immersive, visual and sensory), an emotional connection is created between users and the subject and stimulated with ideas of play and the unexpected
- Attention to the choreography of the spatial procession
- Distinctive sense of transformation and reinvention that begins most clearly at the entry point
- From minimalist to maximalist, themes that express a materiality that reads as “intelligent” and socially and ecologically “conscious”.
ABOVE: Nepenthe's rarely unoccupied communal dining tables on the front patio, where the processes of immersion and transformation, essential aspects of the Forbes rating criteria, begin immediately upon seating.
RICHARD OLSEN