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A bridge-like concept named Koi took home the grand prize in this year’s Radical Innovation competition, where HD Expo attendees cast their votes for the winner. The other finalists are MORPHotel and the Merlion Hotel. Koi’s designer, Marc Mussche, MM Planners, received the $10,000 sixth annual HD/JHG Radical Innovation in Hospitality Competition grand prize.
Six years ago, the John Hardy Group (JHG) and Hospitality Design (HD) magazine joined forces with the goal of honoring leading-edge ideas in the market place. Today, the competition is the industry’s gold standard for radical thinking, and is presented in partnership with sponsor Global Allies (booth #4200). John Hardy, president and CEO, JHG, says, “The sixth annual Radical Innovation in Hospitality Competition is unfolding as the most interesting one yet. As the only forum for new hospitality development concepts globally, its international reach is borne out by the fact that for the first time ever, all three finalists are from outside the U.S. Don’t miss the event.”
WINNER
Koi
Design: Marc Mussche, MM Planners
Concept: This bridge-like concept imagines hospitality as a “link,” combining city dynamics and urban regeneration to create a public space and platform for events, creating and moving urban flow for an experience of comfort, leisure, and recreation in virtually any major commercial and cultural space.
FINALISTS
MORPHotel
Design: Gianluca Santosuosso
Concept: This project intends to develop a new luxury hotel concept where users have the opportunity to experience a stay in a floating system moving around the world. The MORPHotels, thanks to their linear structure developed around their “vertebral spine,” are able to adapt their shape according to the weather conditions and the site morphology.
The Merlion Hotel
Design: Tatzu Nishi, Arataniurano
Concept: For the Singapore Biennial, the designer imagined a hotel surrounding the Singapore Merlion monument where visitors were able to have the symbol of the country to themselves for a night. Condensing the characteristic of a port town where strangers from distant places meet, spend a short time together, and leave again to shape the hotel’s concept, Nishi brought an exterior monument inside, reversing the concept of exterior and interior.
Student Finalist: REN Retreats
Design: Miles McMullin, Cornell University – School of Hotel Administration
Concept: This hotel concept for urban centers revolves around revolutionary style catering to budget conscious yet fun-seeking and design-aware travelers. Including details like an all-white, minimal design aesthetic and a revolutionary cleaning system to reduce labor costs (such as a self-cleaning closet), this idea concept re-thinks the traditional hostel.
Meet the 2012 Jury:
Claude Amar | president | The John Hardy Group International
John Hardy | president and CEO | The John Hardy Group
Michael Medzigian | chairman and managing partner | Watermark Capital Partners
Jena Thornton, LEED AP | vice president hotels | Kennedy Associates Real Estate Counsel, LP
Simon Turner | president, global development | Starwood Hotels Resorts
James Woods | managing partner | Keen Partners
Special Guest Juror: Wing Chao, famed innovator and architect
Host: Vern Yip, TV personality
