Hospitality Beyond Hotels: Making Third Places

KPF is applying the lessons of hospitality design to projects from offices to universities, making the world a more welcoming place.

Human beings are social animals; the deep need to be near one another is the same force that drives us to form relationships, work together, and build cities. In many ways, providing for that need is the essence of hospitality design. Hospitality projects are places where people can come together in groups large or small, intentionally or through sheer serendipity.

But coming together doesn’t have to be limited to hotels and restaurants; cities are full of places where people interact with one another more casually. These environments, such as coffee shops, public squares, restaurants, and bars are often called third places because they are neither the home nor the workplace, and they are critical to creating welcoming and lively urban places.

KPF’s commitment to elevating the urban realm leads us to create novel environments where people mix, ideas happen, and vibrancy thrives in projects of all kinds. To make third places that work, we draw on our experience with hospitality projects to understand what people are looking for in the spaces they use every day.

These environments take many forms, from quiet places for a reflective pause to bustling café spaces and passageways that double as meeting points. They are also defined in relation to their host project, shaping how people experience the workplace, school, airport, station, or residential building of which they are a component. A common theme is that they give building users the agency to decide what kind of an experience they want to have. With multiple different space options, seating arrangements, and environments, these places allow users to tailor their experience. Aesthetically, they are softer, more human in scale, feature warmer materials, and incorporate more greenery than is traditionally found in office lobbies, academic buildings, and residential common areas.

As our lives become increasingly digital, and fears of a “loneliness epidemic” gain currency, the renewed interest in third places is a welcome one. These environments remind us of the importance of positive friction, that sharing space with familiar people, loose connections, and complete strangers is a benefit of urban life, not a flaw to be avoided.

The Sociable Workplace

Today’s offices are about connection, work-life balance, and establishing the workplace as an environment where people choose to spend their time. Nowhere is this more visible than in the office lobby, where a new generation of workplaces is replacing grandiose, marble-clad mausoleums with softer, more human-scaled environments and even strategically programming lobby space to create a more porous connection between interior and exterior environments. Take, for instance KPF’s 415 Natoma Street project in San Francisco. Here, a lobby space designed in collaboration with IwamotoScott Architecture functions as a public pass-through, connecting two major streets in the city’s South of Market district. Programmed with a lively coffee shop as well as casual seating, the space is welcoming, convenient, and offers office workers and city dwellers a third place to unwind, connect with one another, or get some work done. This idea of positive friction, creating environments where people on different user journeys share space, is critical to creating lively, mixed-use environments.

One Fukuoka, a new office tower in Japan takes this idea even further, pioneering the idea of a highly amenitized office tower that is deeply integrated into its surrounding urban fabric and community. With a design driven by the idea of creating an oasis within an office building, the project’s base rests atop a transit connection, with retail space and a public amenity area from which building users can access co-working spaces, office floors, or the small hotel and rooftop restaurant on the building’s top floors.

This mix of uses ensures that the building is active and occupied around the clock, whether by office workers, shoppers, hotel guests, or attendees of evening events in the building’s large public lobby, which has become a popular gathering place. Material and design choices reflect this hospitality shift: Dark metal and natural wood textures compose a soft but sophisticated palette that is reinforced by abundant plantings and a robust collection of commissioned artwork more reminiscent of a hotel than an office tower.

KPF’s design for the Meta offices in New York City’s historic James A. Farley Building takes a completely different approach but one that draws no less heavily from the firm’s experience with hospitality projects. Packing 3,500 desks, 545 meeting rooms, and 186 specialty rooms into the vast footprint of a historic postal depot, the project is a city unto itself, with social spaces, lounges, food and beverage areas, abundant greenery, and adaptable workplaces.

A communicating feature stair in the office’s central atrium spans its four levels, providing natural light throughout and casual gathering spaces at large landings and enabling biophilic elements to support user well-being. Indoor plants connect the journey from the main lobby, through the second floor and to the central atrium, culminating in the generously planted top-floor dining facility. To promote intuitive wayfinding, each floor is organized by a central theme, leveraging unique aesthetic selections and material choices to instill a sense of place.

The World at Your Doorstep

It’s not only office workers who increasingly demand a thoughtful mix of amenities and semi-public third spaces in their buildings. Today, buyers of high-end residential properties are eager for amenities and lobbies that were once available only in the best hotels. The rise of branded residences, such as KPF’s Residences at Mandarin Oriental, Miami, speak to the desire to attach a hospitality experience to a long-term stay. Even towers without an attached hotel are drawing inspiration from the best hotel lobby, drop off, and amenity experiences. Take, for example, SCOPE Langsuan, one of the most successful luxury residential developments in Bangkok. The building’s spacious lobby lounge, outdoor pool deck, and elegant drop off are designed to make residents feel like coming home is as exciting as checking in to a truly great hotel.

In New York City, 520 Fifth Avenue, which combines boutique office with condominium residences, includes in its offering a private members club, modeled on popular offerings such as SoHo House. Called Moss, it offers a dedicated lobby, along with a subterranean thermal spa and gym, dining room, bar, and gathering space for events.

Communities for Learning

As universities lean in to a new understanding of how students learn, academic spaces are undergoing a transformation inspired by lessons from hospitality design. These changes are omnipresent; from hotel style amenities in dorm buildings, to social study areas in academic buildings. At the Ann McIlrath Drake Executive Education Center at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, KPF is taking this a step further, creating a university building where hospitality is an integral part of the pedagogy. Intended for use by an executive MBA program, this building is topped by guest rooms, where students stay for weekend-long intensives or longer stays. It’s often said that business is done face to face, and in executive education the networking and interpersonal elements of learning are as important as classroom instruction.

The seven-story building includes seven dining rooms, 160 guest rooms for program participants, cutting-edge production studios, ten state-of-the-art classrooms, and over 10,000 square feet of group study space. The ground floor is anchored by a main lobby with direct connections to multiple dining facilities and outdoor patios overlooking Lake Michigan. A double-height promenade connects the second and third floors, which house classrooms and the sunlit Executive Club space. Guestrooms are punctuated by lounges for socializing opportunities and occupy the uppermost floors, providing a level of privacy from the busier academic spaces. The classroom floors feature central lounges and smaller gathering spaces with sweeping lake views.

Drawing on a concept familiar to hospitality spaces but rarely applied to educational environments, a second hallway on the opposite side of the bar of classrooms provides back-of-house access, allowing for easy service and minimal disruption during events. The result is a state-of-the-art educational facility that enables an engaging residency experience for students and visiting professionals to learn, network, and advance their careers.

Building Blocks of the Central Social District

The buildings that are most effective at making cities more sociable places are the ones that invite the world in. As our urban centers evolve from a central business district model predicated on homogeneous office buildings to a central social district that blends uses such as work and play, it becomes even more important to design buildings that make space not only for their primary programmatic function but also create possibilities for serendipitous encounters through more casual use, becoming places where people are excited to spend time.