What’s Happening: The Radical Innovation Award, an annual competition that challenges creative thinkers within travel and hospitality to pioneer compelling ideas that push the industry forward, has announced this year’s winners. Selected from 80 entries, the finalists were assessed by a panel of hospitality design experts on the merits of their creative vision, design, feasibility, and potential impact.
The Winners: Taking home top honors (and $10,000) this year is Luxury Frontiers, which submitted Camp Sarika by Amangiri. Canyon Equity tasked the firm with designing North America’s first all-weather, year-round tented camp, resulting in ten lavishly appointed pavilions that offer Amangiri’s high level of luxury while responding to Utah desert’s extreme climatic conditions. The Modern Monastery by Indidesign and Dream Pod by Populous were named first and second runners up, respectively, while Jieru Lin from California College of the Arts was named the student winner for Moment Hotel.
In addition, this year’s ceremony introduced a hospitality product design category. Belstone, the inaugural professional winner, engineered the Bruskin Glass Modular Shower—an easy-to-assemble modular commercial shower that features pre-cut glass surround walls equipped with water repellant technology, which addresses hygienic issues in showers today. The student winner, Arda Genc from Istanbul Technical University, devised Mio: a smart mirror that features air purification and white noise generating functions to help guests sleep in a healthier, calmer environment.
In Their Own Words: “There are few industries more impacted than the hospitality space as a result of the absence of travel,” says the architect Danny Forster, who hosted this year’s virtual ceremony. “As an architect who specializes in hospitality, our practice has been shaken to the core. I’m especially happy to be supporting an institution that focuses on out-of-the-box thinking that’ll help us reinvent the hospitality industry for tomorrow. Now more than ever, we need to think radically about what hotel design really means.”
Surface Says: These proposals offer a promising path forward for an industry that could benefit from out-of-the-box thinking.