Hospitality is booming in Los Angeles, and KFA is doing its part to plan, design, permit, and build significant hotel and restaurant projects around the city. Hotels are the glamorous, interior design-intensive cousins of typical multifamily projects, but at their core the two building types have similar elements with life-safety concerns, accessibility, permitting and meeting the basic living needs of people for sleeping, eating, and comfort, all in human-scaled, empathetically-designed spaces.

KFA is about excited about eight new hotel/hospitality projects in its pipeline for 2015. This includes Sydell Group‘s Freehand LA, a boutique hostel/hotel adaptive reuse project in downtown LA’s long-abandoned Commercial Exchange building. The KFA team will also be busy with new hotel and restaurant projects for Five Chairs Development that include two developments on Broadway in DTLA and three in Hollywood.  KFA’s redesign of the Standard Hotel restaurant will be opening in mid-summer. Other projects, to be announced, will be kicking off in 2015.

KFA’s first market-rate hotel design project, The Hotel Wilshire, opened in 2009 followed by the Ace Hotel in 2013 both of which have won multiple design awards. Other award-winning hospitality projects include the Bel Air Bar & Grill, Café Gratitude, and Trader Vic’s at LA Live.

Hotel design includes not only architecture, but also the planning and design of food and beverage outlets that are associated with the properties. KFA is enjoying this logical expansion into the hospitality market as an extension of its ability to offer full-service creative design for all aspects of housing including rentals, condominiums, and hotel rooms, recognizing that they all contribute to building vibrant, livable cities.