From boutique urban hotels to iconic resort destinations, hospitality architecture demands a unique synthesis of experiential design, cultural sensitivity, and operational excellence. KPF Principals Josh Chaiken, Rebecca Gromet, and Ko Makabe have spent their careers shaping some of the world’s most celebrated hotels, from the Park Hyatt Shanghai to the Rosewood Hong Kong to the Andaz New York. Collaborating with some of the world’s leading hospitality brands, they work across continents and cultures to design buildings that are contextual, luxurious, and add value to their urban environments.

All three Principals hold a conviction that a great hotel is never just a place to sleep but is a place that activates its urban context for a diversity of people and uses. Great hotels welcome everyone – for a 30-minute coffee, a family dinner, a business trip, a years-long residence, and everything in between.

2026 marks KPF’s 50th anniversary, and hospitality has been a defining thread across those five decades. In this roundtable, guest moderator Lila Allen, a writer, strategist, and editor, sits down with the three KPF Principals as they share their expertise on how the industry has changed and how KPF has shaped it. Touching on topics from the rise of ‘bleisure’ travel, the boom in branded residences, the bathtub’s migration toward the window, Josh, Rebecca, and Ko explore what it means to design for luxury in 2026.

Josh Chaiken (left): With a portfolio of over 70 hospitality projects, Josh brings extensive experience delivering award-winning hotels around the world. Working with leading brands such as Park Hyatt, Langham, and Andaz, Josh’s work is defined by an acute sensibility for the experience of the individual, demonstrated across multiple scales, such as Park Hyatt Suzhou, Aman Tokyo, and The Langham & Andaz Xintiandi. Josh is actively engaged with the Council on Vertical Urbanism (CVU), contributing to focus groups and leading New York walking tours, and frequently serves on design juries.

Rebecca Gromet (center): As a leader of KPF’s residential and hotel-planning practice, Rebecca has contributed to 41 of the firm’s hospitality projects over 15 years. She leverages connections between interior and exterior architectural experiences to create welcoming environments for living and staying, with notable projects including the Mandarin Oriental Wangfujing, Waldorf Astoria Deer Valley Resort and Residences, and Auberge Houston Hotel and Residences. Rebecca has served as a part-time faculty member at Parsons School of Design, a guest critic at Columbia University’s GSAPP, and a lecturer at Yale School of Architecture.

Ko Makabe (right): For nearly three decades, Ko has shaped some of KPF’s most high-profile hospitality projects around the globe. His work for leading international hospitality brands has earned widespread recognition, with his projects often cited among the world’s best hotels. His portfolio spans 43 hospitality projects, including the Mandarin Oriental Las Vegas, Tokyo Garden Terrace, and Qingdao Financial City. Active in the architectural community, Ko is a mentor to younger architects and helps organize the firm’s Designer Sessions, in which KPF architects gather informally to foster the cross-pollination of ideas.

Lila Allen is a writer and editor focused on ideas that shape the built environment. Her work has been featured in a wide array of publications, including The New York Times, The Architect’s Newspaper, Architectural Record, and books including Design for Children (Phaidon, 2018), Drama (Phaidon, 2021), and At a Distance: 100 Visionaries at Home in a Pandemic (Apartamento, 2021). As the moderator, her quotes appear bolded in the below transcription of the interview.

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I’d love to start with an icebreaker: What is your most memorable moment in hospitality, personally or professionally?

Ko Makabe: There was a Hyatt International President, Bernd Chorengel, who we called “B.C.” We were designing a Hyatt hotel in Toulouse, France. One time, he looks at me and goes, “What are you wearing?” I said, well, I thought I’d be proper with my suit and tie. He said, “You look like a businessperson. Take the tie off. Button down is more casual. Try to be more like a design architect.” One of the lessons he taught me is that being in hospitality, be like a designer, not a businessman.

Rebecca Gromet: Mine is a little bit more silly. My first time working on a hotel, I couldn’t believe we had so many bars within one hotel. That was my first awakening that there is so much more than just coming to stay overnight and that there’s a lot more activity going on. Just that pure volume, and the wide range of guests, was what surprised me.

Josh Chaiken: I’ll circle back to B.C. When we worked with him on Grand Hyatt Tokyo, they were almost reinventing the urban mixed-use project. We were talking about food and beverage and he said “We’re going to put a café right next to the drop off.” It seemed like such an alien idea, but they were really thinking about how to activate the public realm, and it elevated the hotel in a way we hadn’t thought about.

That takes us nicely into our next question. Who is a luxury hotel for, at this moment in time, and how has that evolved over the course of your careers and KPF’s history? What does this look like in 2026?

RG: I find that you can cater to many people at the same time. Someone’s not just going there for business—they can get the full experience, from wellness to relaxation. And that way, if you are traveling for business, you can bring your family along, and the experience is both very pleasurable and conducive to doing work from anywhere.

Are we embracing the term “bleisure”?

[laughter]

Business and leisure. It’s a buzzword that’s been thrown around, I think at least since COVID, referring to this hybrid travel that is really having a moment right now.

RG: Yes, it is having a moment. Our current projects blend all of that, wherever it is. I think that’s key in a luxury hotel—that you need to have that full wellness component.

And how does that take shape outside of just amenities?

KM: Actually, the bed sheets and the pillowcases are really important. That becomes luxury. People really care about the materials, even the glass of cups— all the interior materials are really quite an important component. We collaborate with very world-famous interior designers—like Tony Chi, Yabu Pushelberg, and Adam Tihany—and in many ways they teach us what luxury is about.

JC: The collaboration between us and the interior designer is very important. We’re creating a backdrop for their work. What we do sets the tone. The level of detail and consideration that Ko is mentioning is something that we think about, but differently from the interior designers. They purely pay attention to storytelling, thinking about who the customers are and what they’re looking for. While that certainly impacts what we do, and we learn a lot from our interior design collaborators, in our case the audience is also the larger city. We are always navigating between the private realm of the hotel and how our buildings might interface with the city.

Fascinating. I would love to just look back for a moment and direct a question to you, Ko. Asia has long been a testing ground for urban luxury hospitality, and KPF has been at the center of that—from the Aman Tokyo to the Rosewood Hong Kong to the Rosewood Bangkok. What’s driven that evolution? Was it the developers pushing the envelope, the cities themselves creating the conditions, or the brands redefining what luxury even means? How have those forces played out over time?

KM: I think Asian culture has historically been more hospitality oriented. Take Mandarin Oriental, for example; before I was designing for them, I was a guest. They focus on spas and wellness. You go to get pampered, to get nicely treated, and to get a three-hour spa experience. This kind of hospitality has become almost necessary for many places. Even like a Hyatt group. In the 1990s and early 2000s, it was completely different. Asian and European Hyatts are very hospitality-oriented, including food and beverage. The U.S. was far behind at that time, but they are trying to catch up now.

Even the bathtub experience, for example—that transformed more towards the late 90s. The bathtub used to be more towards the inside, but now they want to put it by the windows so you can soak in the bathtub and see outside. That started more in Asian projects, but now it’s anywhere we design.

Do hotels matter to the success of downtowns, and if so, why, and how do they relate to them?

RG: Cities are transforming. What used to be the central business district is totally transforming into a central social district that brings everything together. And hotels are the anchor of that, because they connect all those different uses. And it’s not just like you’re going there just to do work, or you’re just going there to sleep—it’s a mixture of all kinds of uses that builds community. It’s very important to not just visually be contextual, but really anchor ourselves in the network. I think that’s why hotels get the prime spot. Because they really are the anchor for that social district and bring everyone together.

KM: That really is such an important component. An office isn’t active 24/7, whereas a hotel is. Sometimes people from the neighborhood use the spas on the weekends, people go to the hotels after work, and there is tourism coming to the cities.

Right. It keeps the city alive, during all hours of the day.

RG: The program is so diverse. You can come at 2PM for a call, a tea, a drink, a light snack, and be a visitor for just two hours. Or you can stay on vacation or for work, come for an event, or come for dinner with your family in the evening. It’s truly active at all times of day, and there are so many different ways to engage with what the hotel offers. That’s exactly why these hotels have become such anchors in central social districts and why they’ve been so transformative for downtowns.

Do you feel like the hotel lobby is a kind of public living room, and a place for the public to gather? Or is that changing as people seek more privacy? Are there other trends?

KM: It really depends on the branding. Some brands want to have that exclusiveness and don’t want to have the public come in. Some are trying to open up and activate the lounges as spaces where people can get together to have a tea or a coffee.

JC: Its very conscious on their part. Take Aman, for instance. It’s exclusive by design. Anyone can walk in but its still designed to feel quite exclusive. Aman has another brand that they’ve launched recently that keeps the same level of luxury but opens it up to be more accessible and public-facing. You’re still paying twenty dollars for an espresso—

[laughter]

—but you’re having it in a lobby lounge that feels open to the public.

In hotels that are in high rises, like the Park Hyatt Shanghai, how does height change the experience? And how do you think about that relationship to the urban fabric below?

KM: The experience of arrival completely changes. We always think about how people arrive at the ground level, but in hotels at the top of supertalls, guests then take the elevator shuttle. At Park Hyatt Shanghai, you step out at the 87th floor, and you’re above the clouds. It’s a wild experience. And the reception desk is positioned so you can see the sky. Not the skyline. The sky. I think the supertall building experience is so different versus standard hotels.

Shifting to the other end of the spectrum, how is designing resorts that are in more far-flung destinations more like designing a small city than the urban hotel we were just discussing?

RG: I find that there are a lot more common and public spaces. There’s a lot more indoor-outdoor programming with any kind of resort, so there’s a lot of different kinds of terraces tied in with that. It’s maybe slightly more than what you would do in a city, but I do find that urban hotels have many of the same offerings—the real difference is the scale. In successful urban hotels, you would never have to leave if you didn’t want to because everything you would need is there. I find that the bigger difference between our resorts and our urban hotels is the focus we put on connecting people to the outdoors, in addition to the bigger scale.

JC: In a way, your descriptor of the resort possibly being like a city within a city depends on how removed it is, and then how self-sufficient. Take Atlantis, The Royal. What’s striking is that despite its monumentality, it has all these cutouts that carve out space that create a kind of courtyard. It takes the urban experience and channels it through a hospitality filter.

You do work across so many different cultures, countries, and contexts. How do you translate local materials and vernacular into something that also feels contemporary, fresh, and luxurious?

KM: It’s not just about the hotel. As architects, we always try to design something specific for local culture. We want to incorporate the urban fabric and make it better. Wherever I’m designing—China, Europe, India—the first thing I do is read the context: what are the local materials and what is appropriate for the local culture? That is something we can control when we design buildings. Sometimes it transforms the architectural vocabulary. What Josh did for the Langham and Andaz Xintiandi is a good example. The vocabulary looks very Shanghai-like. You wouldn’t put that building in New York. It would be quite odd.

JC: In that case, the Langham and Andaz Xintiandi draws from the neighborhood. We typically like to establish a character that feels like it belongs in and draws from its context. Usually, the operators want that: a hotel that feels like a part of its place.

KM: And, of course, the brands have their own identity, too. For example, when you sit in a Rosewood hotel, you know you’re in a Rosewood. It doesn’t feel like an Aman. But they do adapt their character to the location. London, Hong Kong, New York—they’re all unmistakably Rosewood, and yet they’re Rosewood through the lens of the given location.

That’s a very good point. You are working with brands that have different identities, and across these different contexts. Is there a shared grammar that is distinct to KPF?

RG: Each brand approaches it differently. Some have such strict standards that wherever you go, they set the same expectations. Others want to be very contextual. They want each property to be unique to its context, and what unifies the brand is the level of service.

If you’re a global traveler, it is a nice subtle cue that there’s something that feels familiar about each hotel, even if you’re in a totally different place.

What is the hardest space to get right in a hotel? These are places to stay but also places to work. There are guests, long-term residents, and people working there. Is it the lobby, the room, the restaurant, or the back of house and actually making these hotels function that is the most challenging aspect?

KM: I think the guest room is the most important factor. People work, sleep, eat, sometimes have meetings in their hotel rooms. That is more difficult than functional spaces, like a ballroom, for example. A ballroom is a ballroom. That isn’t too difficult. They propose it, you design it. The guest room is completely different. You want to differentiate, but you’re also working within a certain modulation that is repeating. We can create anything we want, but we want to make sure it’s a hotel.

RG: I agree that the hotel room is the most critical. The back of house is very challenging in different ways. It has to functionally work, and everything that comes in and out of the hotel is in a back of house scale, like by the loading dock. That’s very complicated, but it’s not the guest experience. The module, the guest room, is the most fundamental to get right in the hotel.

JC: I kind of agree with that. I agree that it’s the most fundamental and challenging. But at least half of that challenge is carried by the interior designer. Most hotels want to have a guest room mock-up. We’re involved in that but I would say that the interior designers do a lot of the heavy lifting. I want to suggest that the arrival experience has a lot of complexity. Often, there’s limited room in an urban project, which requires a lot of planning and logistics. It also establishes the identity of the hotel.

There’s that old theater saying: the show starts at the sidewalk.

[laughter]

JC: Yeah.

The arrival is an important experience, and as you point out, this kind of nexus of urbanism, the architecture, and all these logistics. So that makes sense.

I do want to ask about branded residences, which we’re seeing a lot more of. What has driven that recent growth? Rebecca, I know you’ve worked closely on this. How does this change your design approach for a hospitality project? Can you tell me about your experience in that world?

RG: Even within that, there’s a lot. But as I mentioned, I think it’s the level of service that’s making branded residences so prevalent right now. You get your home and the hotel’s service with it. Where it really influences the design is in circulation. We talked about the guest experience and the back of house, but now you have two front-of-house flows to manage. It’s a lot of the functional planning, because when it’s your home, you don’t want it open to the public in any way, even if it’s the paying guests of the hotel. It informs where you design for privacy. The branded residences work by having the amenities. They get to use the amenities, and most often they will want that access in a more exclusive way, to not have to go down where the public has to go down. So you have the public flows, the hotel guest flows, and the residential flows.

It’s interesting, because a lot of times these are led by very trusted luxury hospitality brands. It seems like they are dealing with trust, and that their hospitality customers have come to know and trust these brands to deliver a residential experience. Has that been your experience? Does that trust inform your design approach?

RG: I haven’t thought of it that way, but there are loyalists with brands, which is why brand identity is so important in our hotel designs. I think this kind of branding has, besides the flows, really transformed more of the residential side of things.

KM: We have done quite a few branded hotel residences, including Mandarin, Rosewood, and Aman. Not every luxury hotel has branded residences. To your point, access to amenities and restaurants is a plus for the residential side. Another benefit is that sometimes, they sell it. So, from a developer’s point of view, having branded residences brings additional cash flow to the project.

JC: You can almost see the math in the way the buildings are designed and stacked. Residences are almost always on the upper levels, where they will command higher prices. Usually, there will be an amenity floor as a transition between guest rooms and residences.

RG: We don’t often do standalone hotels. It needs something else. Which makes residential a great complement and also benefits the economics.

I would love to hear about a project you’re working on right now that you’re excited about. Something coming up in the next year or so.

JC: One that’s very much in production is a ski resort in Utah. It’s part of a ski village, so it both stands on its own and engages with the rest of the ski village. And the terrain is beautiful. It’s a fun, exciting, and different kind of opportunity for us.

KM: I am excited about a wellness hotel in Las Vegas that we are doing. In a way, it’s a completely different mindset. It’s very close to a hospital and a highway, which changes the amenities we have within the hotel.

I want to end on a fun question, which is, which hotel that you’ve worked on would you most like to get a drink in?

KM: Excellent question. Do we have to pick one? [laughter] Can I pick two? Definitely Grand Hyatt Tokyo, because I probably have spent the most time there. We’re also working on the renovation of the Andaz New York, which is right across from our office. That is one of my go-to places.

RG: The Landmark Mandarin in Beijing. It’s on Wangfujing, and it faces the Forbidden City. You get a great view and a great experience, and I feel very connected to history there.

JC: I think it would be fun to have a drink at the Atlantis. I’ve never actually been there.

RG: We should do a trip. I would validate your choice.

50th Anniversary KPF trip?

KM: Great idea. [laughter] That’s perfect.

Well, thanks to all three of you for being here and for talking with me today. Cheers to 50 years.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. The full conversation can be found in the above linked YouTube video.