The James Beard Foundation announces its Restaurant and Chef Awards semifinalists, the architecture world loses Balkrishna Doshi, and hotel investors prepare for an influx of dealmaking. All that and more in this week’s Five on Friday.
Influential architect Balkrishna Doshi passes away
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Balkrishna Doshi, considered India’s greatest architect, died earlier this week at the age of 95, reports Dezeen. Doshi’s six-decade career amassed more than 100 realized projects, many of which focused on social housing and urban planning. He is credited with greatly impacting the direction of Indian architecture and was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2018, the first Indian to receive the honor. In 2022, he was also presented the RIBA Royal Gold Medal. Additionally, he taught at several universities and founded the Vastu Shilpa Foundation, which helps develop indigenous design and planning standards for India.
Are all U.S. cities beginning to look the same?
Cookie-cutter multifamily residential buildings, spawned from a need for housing and formed by municipal design guidelines and budgetary restrictions, are popping up all over America. Known as 5-over-1s, complexes with roughly five wood-frame stories atop a single concrete podium have become the dominant development in many cities, reports The New York Times. Data from RentCafe sites that 420,000 rental apartments were built in the U.S. last year, many of which were constructed by the same behemoth development companies. And while “fast-casual architecture” and “gentrification buildings” are not being fully embraced, the sentiment could change (as it did with the brownstones of Brooklyn and Harlem). “In their role as housing and much-needed housing, people might look back on them more positively,” says Liz Falletta, an architect and professor at the University of Southern California. “They may not be valorized as good design, but people’s attitudes will change.”
James Beard reveals semifinalists for Restaurant and Chef Awards
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The James Beard Foundation announced the 2023 Restaurant and Chef Awards semifinalists, one of five separate recognition programs of the James Beard Awards. The Restaurant Chef Awards, which were established in 1990, span 23 categories, including the newly added Award for Outstanding Bakery. This year’s semifinalists include Brandon Chrostowski of the EDWINS Leadership and Restaurant Institute in Cleveland for Outstanding Restaurateur (Chrostowski was a keynote speaker at HD’s NextGen Forum in 2022); Erik Ramirez of Peruvian restaurant Llama Inn in Brooklyn for Outstanding Chef; and Bar Spero in Washington, DC for Best New Restaurant. Nominees will be announced March 29th and winners will be celebrated at a ceremony in Chicago on June 5th.
The year’s hotel investment trajectory
In 2012, Starwood Capital Group purchased the Gansevoort Miami South Beach, which was then transformed into the Meyer Davis-designed 1 Hotel South Beach
One of the many takeaways from the two-day Americas Lodging Investment Summit (ALIS) in Los Angeles earlier this week came from hotel investment groups. According to Skift, Blackstone, Starwood Capital Group, and other major players are looking at capital and short-listing assets they want to buy if optimal conditions arise later this year, resulting in billion-dollar hotel portfolio deals. “We’re all waiting for three or four months to see what happens,” says Steven Goldman, managing director at Starwood. “If it doesn’t look like a tsunami, we may all start to flow in because the fundamentals are inherently good.”
The Hot List is here: This is who made the cut…
Six Senses London, with interiors by AvroKO and architecture by Foster + Partners, is expected to open late 2023
Our annual Hot List, featured in our soon-to-be-released January 2023 issue, offers a glimpse of the most-anticipated hotels opening in the weeks and months to come. “From brand debuts and new launches to historic renovations and resorts that reimagine wellness,” editor in chief Stacy Shoemaker Rauen writes, “it’s an impressive group of properties—almost 50 from around the globe—that offer a glimpse of the talent and innovation that define our industry.” Among the 2023 highlights are the just-opened Atlantis the Royal in Dubai, Bunkhouse’s Hotel Genevieve in Louisville, Six Senses London, and more.
