Interior Design Spotlights 2023 Healthcare Giants

What’s most interesting about the Healthcare Giants isn’t the numbers so much as how the business has evolved during the pandemic—and in general. Consider colonoscopies, tonsillectomies, and other minor procedures that were always a little too major to happen outside a hospital setting. The rise of skilled-care facilities and those dedicated to a single function, such as outpatient procedures or diagnostic imaging, have resulted in lots of smaller design projects. In 2019 the Healthcare Giants worked on 3,200; in 2022 that number rose to 5,500—a 73 percent increase partially attributed to smaller COVID-related projects that may not have otherwise happened. But there’s no question that the design of the physical environment is changing.

And yet, hospital design work remains a stalwart: Acute-care hospitals accounted for half of 2022’s $698 million fees—a bit below the COVID-boosted $790 million in 2020, but handily beating the $607 million pre-pandemic dollars. (The most growth, however, is projected for behavioral health and walk-in/urgent-care clinics.) Furniture, fixtures, and construction products also now outstrip 2019 numbers—$17.8 billion versus $14.6 billion.

But there’s a catch: forecasts. The Healthcare Giants predict $562 million fee income and $14.9 billion FF&C income in 2023, both healthy drops. Whether this is something to fear or just the nature of a market over-boiled by a public health emergency and point-of-service changes remains to be seen. This odd combination of instability and prosperity might just stay with us a while longer.

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Project Categories

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Growth Potential Over Next Two Years

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Editor’s Note: Take a look at recent coverage of our Healthcare Giants most admired firms of 2023 below. CannonDesign tops the list followed by Perkins&Will, and ZGF.

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Methodology

The Interior Design Giants annual business survey comprises the largest firms ranked by interior design fees for the 12-month period ending December 31, 2022. The listings are generated from only those surveyed. To be recognized as a top 100, Rising, Healthcare, or Hospitality Giant, you must meet the following criteria: Have at least one office location in North America, and generate at least 25% of your interior design fee income in North America. Firms that do not meet the criteria are ranked on our International Giants list. Interior design fees include those attributed to:

1. All aspects of a firm’s in­terior design practice, from strategic planning and programming to design and project management.

2. Fees paid to a firm for work performed by employees and independent contractors who are “full-time staff equivalent.”

Interior design fees do not include revenues paid to a firm and remitted to subcontractors who are not con­sid­ered full-time staff equivalent. For example, certain firms attract work that is subcontracted to a local firm. The originating firm may collect all the fees and re­tain a management or generation fee, paying the remainder to the performing firm. The amounts paid to the latter are not included in fees of the collecting firm when determining its ranking. Ties are broken by rank from last year. Where applicable, all per­cent­ages are based on responding Giants, not their total number. 

All research conducted by ThinkLab, the research division of SANDOW Design Group.

Loyola Marymount University Gets a Theatrical Addition

The word design may derive from the Italian verb segnare, meaning to sign, but Skidmore, Owings & Merrill senior associate principal Carlos Madrid III eschewed a splashy signature in favor of cultivating a sense of community in two recent projects at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. The School of Film and Television Undergraduate Building, a four-story slab of teaching spaces with an attached theater—24,000-square-foot in all—and the Drollinger Family Stage, an outdoor performance pavilion, both serve as student magnets that foster and sustain campus life. “The main driver was creating and activating people-oriented buildings,” says Madrid, who led both projects.

The main SFTV building is straightforward, a no-nonsense block of concrete finished in troweled stucco. Its upper levels host flexible multipurpose classrooms while staff offices, post-production classrooms, and a camera directing studio occupy the ground floor, which is pierced by a wide breezeway leading to a landscaped courtyard and the existing SFTV graduate building in back. The 86-seat theater, housed in a separate yet adjoining volume clad in matte silver aluminum panels, sits in front.

SOM Designs The School of Film and Television Undergraduate Building

For Madrid, form did not mean shape—or at least, not unusual shape. Rather, the architect used it to organize patterns of movement and rest around the simple slab, to create an armature for all the in-between moments of student life: getting to and leaving from class; hanging out; sitting down to chat, read, check phone messages. Some interiors have windows but most do not, so Madrid extroverted the introverted program. “We started thinking about how to activate the building’s exterior, putting all the circulation outside,” he says, “so we would see people moving up and down the stairs, like an ant farm.” L.A.’s mild climate allowed him and his team to service the classrooms with outdoor corridors—a stack of cantilevered aerial sidewalks, wide enough to accommodate tables, chairs, and casual encounters alongside bustling foot traffic—with staircases at each end. The whole east facade is populated and alive, a human terrarium, not simply a designed composition.

Madrid veiled the vertical streetscape with a gauzy brise-soleil. Made from pleated sheets of perforated powder-coated aluminum, the semitransparent screen lets breezes flow through the corridors while shielding them from the direct morning sun. The space between the veil and the facade acts as a passive buffer, a naturally regulated microclimate that augments building energy efficiency, exemplifying why SOM is ranked not only 19th among our Sustainability Giants but also 49th amid the 100 Giants.

The firm put additional outdoor square footage to use by turning the adjoining theater rooftop into a planted terrace, which Madrid calls a “meditative space,” while the plaza next to the theater, outfitted with bright yellow umbrellas and café furniture, serves as a shaded patio. All the outdoor zones overlook a wide, landscaped pedestrian mall—the spine of the university complex—which has a pleasingly symbiotic relationship with the SFTV building. “The patio has become one of the most popular places on campus,” Madrid reports. “It’s always active, with people hanging out and classes being taught there.”

Building Interiors Feature Mobile Furnishings

In what was a soup-to-nuts project, Madrid and the SOM team designed and furnished the school’s interiors, addressing requirements for a high-tech electronic infrastructure and highly mobile furniture that’s easily moved or stored for multipurpose classroom flexibility.

Loyola Marymount is a repeat client for which SOM has helmed eight projects over the last decade. The architects have taken contextual clues from the existing modernist buildings, conceiving structures with a simplicity and clarity that fit into the larger ensemble, seeking agreement rather than disruption—a strategy Madrid continued with the Drollinger Family Stage. Asked to design an outdoor theater to support film, dance, and drama, he was able to take the program further, in part because the pandemic proved the relative safety of gathering outside. “The building could be more,” he explains, “a classroom for everyday use, plus a facility for health, wellness, movement, and meditation—not just a place for a performance several nights a week.”

An Innovative Outdoor Theater Designed by SOM 

In devising the 3,200-square-foot open pavilion, Madrid took the formal restraint of the SFTV building to the point of minimalism. Located on a central grassy plaza, the stage comprises a low concrete podium with a row of eight slender columns on each side supporting a canted roof that seems to hover weightlessly 24 feet above the ground. In fact, the canopy incorporates a hefty grid of 2-foot-deep perforated steel beams, its coffered underside packed with lighting and audiovisual systems. Thanks to its anodized aluminum–clad perimeter soffit, which extends some 10 feet beyond the columns while tapering to a razor-thin edge, the roof appears to have no mass. Slimmer than the trunks of the surrounding palm trees, the steel pillars have no visible lateral bracing to break the structure’s floating spell or block audience sightlines and yet are sturdy enough to accom­modate conduits running up to the ceiling apparatus.

This futuristic bandshell is more than a feat of sophisticated engineering, however. In its purity and symmetry, the pavilion is like a modern take on a garden folly or a cyber-age version of a classical tempietto. Full-length curtains hang ready to encircle the performance area if required. Stirred by breezes from the nearby ocean, the billowing drapes turn the stage into a sailing vessel—a poetic moment singular on campus.

Inside Loyola Marymount University’s New Film and Television Building

skidmore, owings & merrill: paul danna; tannar whitney; karl gleason; brandon horn; wooil kim; abel diaz; john gordon; yanhong liu; lonny israel; kacey bills; nour mourad

mig: landscape consultant

hlb lighting design: lighting consultant

ama group: mep

KPFF: civil engineer

w.e. o’neil: general contractor

fermob: tables, chairs (hall, patio)

ki: tables (classroom), seating (theater)

luum textiles: acoustic panels (classroom, theater), curtains (theater)

Tuuci: umbrellas (patio)

sunbrella: curtains (stage)

alphabet: handrail lighting

chauvet: theater lighting

valmont structure: custom brise-soleil

axis lighting; targetti: light fixtures

alucobond: exterior cladding

automatic devices company: curtain tracks

Inside Cincinnati’s New Major League Soccer Stadium

Cincinnati is betting big on soccer. After winning a bid for a Major League Soccer expansion team, the city invested $250 million in TQL Stadium, an over 500,00-square-foot venue for FC Cincinnati, soon to play its fifth professional season. Populous, the Kansas City, Missouri, firm that ranks 29th among Interior Design’s top 100 Giants, charged the field to deliver soup-to-nuts services for the massive project, including architecture, interior design, and wayfinding.

The sporty experience begins with a facade wrapped in some 500 energetic vertical aluminum fins, which are connected by an LED system that creates a dazzling display at night. Inside, FC’s colors—fire and navy—team up to cover the stadium’s 26,000 seats. Elsewhere, versions of the orange shade are interpolated into more organic coppers and bronzes, which nod to the city’s industrial history. Find them in the First Financial Club, a beer hall inspired by the region’s rich brewing tradition, and the Tunnel Club, a high-end field-side dining zone where teak accents are reminiscent of the stacks at the Old Cincinnati Library.

A Closer Look at the Design of TQL Stadium in Cincinnati 

Johns Hopkins University Unveils an Innovative Laboratory

Healthcare’s number-one Giant put its thinking cap on in designing a facility for a renowned research center that employs 6,000 of the nation’s top scientists and engineers for work in homeland security, biomedicine, air and missile defense, and other hush-hush but very important endeavors. An interdisciplinary team from CannonDesign—drawing staffers from six offices across three time zones—oversaw the creation of the Applied Physics Laboratory’s new Building 201. The fourth floor of the 263,000-square-foot, five-story structure cantilevers on an asymmetrical forest of mirror-finished stainless-steel columns that imbue the edifice with surprising airiness. Inside, the team combined labs and workspace for the 650-person Research and Exploratory Development Department (APL’s cutting-edge research engine) into a genuinely collaborative network of spaces. “The building fosters an environment where employees can truly flourish,” CannonDesign’s science and technology practice director Stephen Blair explains. To wit: the skylit atrium crisscrossed by seven bridges and five stairs that encourages intermingling between scientists from different teams—proof that architecture can quite literally bridge gaps dividing disciplines.

A Closer Look at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

A Community Clinic Raises the Bar for Trauma-Informed Design

A community clinic offering sliding-scale reproductive healthcare to Twin Cities students since 1971, Family Tree is a haven for marginalized folk. Comprehensive services include STI testing and treatment, birth control, gender-affirming care, and even legal aid for queer and trans people. In 2022, the growing clinic relocated to a 17,000-square-foot new building in south Minneapolis by Perkins&Will.

A trauma-informed approach to design begins with space planning. Corridors draw sight lines to the exterior courtyard, rooted with native butterfly and pollinator-friendly plants, and translucent windows in exam rooms invite daylight while maintaining privacy. “All the entry and circulation paths are clear, simple, and inclusive,” Perkins&Will operations director Cara Prosser notes. The main waiting room showcases vivid murals by a local artist and offers varied seating options to suit patients’ diverse needs. Throughout, the team chose patterns and colors that would reduce visual distraction. Ultimately, Family Tree is a model for the future of healthcare, raising the bar to ensure patients are physically, mentally, and emotionally well.

Family Tree Clinic by Perkins&Will Features Pops of Color 

Behind the Design of LaGuardia Airport’s Delta Airlines Terminal C

New York’s LaGuardia Airport has long held a reputation for being, frankly, the worst. But a six-year overhaul has shot it straight to the top of “best of” lists: Terminal B won UNESCO’s 2021 Prix Versailles and now Delta Air Lines Terminal C is gunning for accolades with soaring interior spaces and abundant natural light courtesy of Corgan. Grounded by warm wood and commanding marble, the three-story central headhouse—with baggage claim, check-in, security, and a Delta Sky Club lounge—and two-story concourses are woven together with site-specific art commissioned in partnership with the local Queens Museum. Sculptor Virginia Overton, influenced by her father’s memories of flying into LaGuardia, suspended an assemblage of salvaged skylights from the atrium ceiling to create Skylight Gems, an installation that encourages visitors to look up and celebrate the sen­sation and spectacle of flight.

Sustainability was also a guiding principle: “We considered big and small gestures that move the needle,” Corgan’s COO and aviation studio leader Jay Liese explains. Think a vast thermal storage system, harvesting to reduce artificial lighting use, and electrochromic smart glass to control glare and heat gain.

This Healthcare Center Immerses Patients in Storybook Narratives

In the name of transforming children’s healthcare for the better, ZGF eschewed scary sterility in favor of storybook immersion at this new eight-story diagnostic and treatment facility, part of a 1-million-square-foot campus expansion at Seattle Children’s Hospital. Kids are deeply absorbed in storytelling in a way grown-ups can no longer access; playing pretend is how they learn about the world. The firm’s narrative-based wayfinding tunes into this, plotting a whimsical journey through the project that immerses visitors and patients in an enchanted natural environment. A trail map in the main lobby illustrates how the hospital’s four wayfinding zones—forest, river, mountain, ocean—connect and identifies the easiest path to each destination. Since this department is located in the forest, wood and organic patterns and textures predominate, while murals by local artists depict comforting animals. Charming details unfold chapter by chapter, so to speak, from backlit 3D dioramas tucked into wall niches to tiny paw prints embedded in the terrazzo floor.

The Seattle Children’s Hospital Features Whimsical Wayfinding Cues 

FXCollaborative Designs a Cultural Hub in Tarrytown, New York

Built in 1908 as a citrus greenhouse on the former Rockefeller family estate in
Tarrytown, New York, the orangerie recently received a stunning face-lift courtesy of FXCollaborative’s adaptive reuse and redesign. The firm salvaged as much of the existing structure as possible to create the new 15,700-square-foot David Rockefeller Creative Arts Center, complete with theatrical lighting, retractable indoor seating, a terrace, and advanced MEP systems enabling the building to achieve net-zero annual energy consumption.

The facility is intended as an artists’ studio, performance space, and rotating gallery; its inaugural exhibit celebrated Women’s History Month with a slate of modern works by female talents. “Every detail is rooted in supporting the creative process across disci­plines,” FXCollaborative senior associate Brandon Massey explains. The project’s forward-thinking scheme extends beyond sustainability, with gender-inclusive restrooms and accessible indoor/outdoor spaces allowing unfettered access to artists and guests of all abilities—a remarkable feat for such a historic institution.

Inside the David Rockefeller Creative Arts Center

This Hotel Embraces the Legends of the Lone Star State

Lauren Rottet stands but 5 feet, 3 ½ inches tall. (Add another 3 when she dons her Manolo Blahniks or Jimmy Choos.) Yet the architect is a towering force in the hotel sector. Rottet Studio, where she is founding principal and president, ranks 16th among the Interior Design Hospitality Giants, not to mention 79th on the top 100 list. Headquartered in Houston, the studio has designed properties around the world—from New York and Los Angeles to Bogotá, Colombia, and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, as well as nearly 70 vessels for Viking Cruises. Her latest endeavor, however, is closer to home: in Lubbock, deep in the west Texas panhandle surrounded by red dirt and tumbleweeds—a far cry from the glamorous urban hubs that typically host her projects. But Cotton Court Hotel is rife with references not only to Lubbock but also the overall Lone Star State, which happens to be where Rottet is from.

Cotton Court is the fourth in Valencia Hotel Group’s Court Collection—Rottet Studio has designed all of them, seven properties total for Valencia—which is all about providing a destination-worthy, boutique-style hotel in a college town. For Cotton Court, that school is Texas Tech University. Rottet and colleague Chris Evans, design director and associate principal, pay homage to it along with the rich history of Lubbock, long a center of cotton production and live music, and Texan-style outdoor living. “Visitors aren’t getting something dumped on them,” Rottet says of the concept. “It’s Lubbock’s own vernacular. That’s what we love.”

The Cotton Court Hotel Honors Its Locale With An Industrial Aesthetic 

The team began with the master plan. Five structures, all new-build but with an airy, sort of repurposed warehouse aesthetic, occupy an approximately 3-acre site, a former parking lot. They’re arrayed around a courtyard with an expansive swimming pool. From there came the exterior materials selection: a tight palette of corrugated and weathering steel and brick is simultaneously minimalist, industrial, and desert. For the interiors, which encompass 50,915 square feet and 165 keys, references to cotton and the local music scene abound, with furnishings and finishes that are luxe yet rustic—oversize tufted-leather sofas, wide wooden floor planks, exposed brick. “People can’t tell it’s new,” Evans says of the project. “It looks as if it’s been renovated.” Or, from Valencia executive vice president John Keeling, “We’re creating adaptive reuse for buildings that don’t exist yet.”

The journey begins in the double-height reception lobby. “We played off the trading floor of a cotton exchange,” Evans continues, noting that Houston has one. At Cotton Court, a wall-size mural on the mezzanine resembles an old futures trading board, its numeric patterns looking like they’re done in chalk. Further, they come together to compose a portrait of musician Buddy Holly, a Lubbock native. (The city was a touring stop for the likes of Elvis Presley and Waylon Jennings.) Under the mural, behind the reception desk, a series of guitars displayed like artworks are available for guests to use.

Rottet Studio Nods to Local Legends 

Cool Off in the Cotton Court Pool

Between the guest-room components stands a low-slung, cotton gin-esque building distinguished by hand-painted signage saying Midnight Shift, which is the property’s restaurant and concert venue (live weekend music is part of the Valencia program). Its cinematic interiors play up the agro-industrial theme. “Pipe framing expresses the machinelike structure,” Evans notes, while the slatted banquette and bar front evoke visions of flat-bed trucks used to transport cotton bales. The restaurant is joined by two meeting rooms envisioned for Monday-to-Thursday professional travel. They can be conjoined as a ballroom for events (there’s also a boardroom capping the entry piece).

If not at Midnight Shift, Rottet says, “Within 5 minutes of checking into their rooms, guests hit the courtyard—to socialize or grab a drink,” or take a dip. Lubbock is hot, with temperatures climbing upwards of 90 degrees during summer. At 50-feet long, the pool is a real swimmer’s pool and the courtyard’s heart. Overlooking it is a shade structure and an outdoor bar with a slatted banquette made to resemble cattle fencing. “It’s like a small urban resort,” Evans says. In fact, pool privileges are extended to locals, so the property has become part of the community, too. “Before Cotton Court,” Rottet concludes, “there was no ‘there’ there for Lubbock.” There sure is now.

Inside the Cotton Court Hotel by Rottet Studio

Rottet Studio: jeff horning; bernardo rios; maksim koloskov; felipe cosio; wade meadors; parker nussbaum; ashlee owens; veronica pesenti

mayse & associates: architect of record

word + carr design group: landscape architect

dci engineers: structural engineer

wh engineering: mep

hugo reed & associates: civil engineer

brand standard furnishings: custom furniture workshop

signco america: custom signage

teinert com­mercial building service: general contractor

through matt camron rugs: vintage rugs (lobby)

Cepac Tile: penny tile

West Elm: coffee tables

schoolhouse electric: sconces

wood goods industries: custom tables (restaurant)

barn light electric: pendant fixtures

Industry West: chairs (restaurant), stools (Pool)

barlow tyrie: chaise longues (pool)

serena + lily: hanging chairs (suite)

rejuvenation: sofa, cocktail table

CB2: side tables

crate and barrel: armchair

daltile: tile (bath­room)

signature plumbing: tub

shaw carpet: custom carpet (guest room)

elegant lighting: custom pendant fixture, custom sconces

wells industries: custom bed

rh: sofa (suite)

new american reel company: custom record table (hall)

ram windows & doors: windows

sherwin-williams company: paint

Introducing Interior Design’s 2023 Hospitality Giants

Ever since the pandemic devastated the hospitality industry, we’ve been waiting for the comeback—and 2022 might be it. Interior Design’s Hospitality Giants brought in $576 million total fees, up 36 percent from the previous year. It’s a welcome surge: When 2020 went viral, so to speak, fees dropped by more than half, to $423 million in 2021, after having enjoyed a decade-long ascent from $600 million to a record $1.1 billion in 2019.

Hotels still make up the lion’s share of hospitality fees—about 49 percent—but that figure has been in gradual decline since peaking in 2013 at 59 percent. Everyone likes nice things, which helps explain why luxury properties account for two-thirds of hotel income overall ($212 million) with boutique and mid-economy income declining—though the $93 million they brought in is nothing to scoff at.

Restaurants ($80 million, 13 percent) and resorts ($67 million, 11 percent) are the next biggest seg­ments, with gaming and country clubs providing steady fees ($51 million combined). Multiuse remains a wildcard. That sector’s mix of hospitality, residential, and retail accounted for 5 percent of all fees ($34 million) last year but has spiked as high as 18 percent in 2019, and 14 percent in 2021. Who wants to bet big on 2023? Inside info: These Giants predict growth in the number of projects they’ll do—if not necessarily fees—in the boutique hotel, resort/spa/country club, restaurant/bar, and yes, multiuse categories.

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Another plus is that Hospitality Giants logged a record 5,700 projects overall, 350 more than the previous high in 2018—and they forecast that an additional 2,000 (!) will be delivered in 2023. Furniture, fixtures, and construction products also staged a rebound, after having plummeted from a cool $19 billion in 2019 to $6.2 billion in 2021 (that tremor you felt was the sector hitting rock bottom). Climbing back to $14.7 billion in 2022, we’re firmly on the road to recovery—although this uptick might be attributed to post-COVID right-sizing rather than a sign of exponential growth.

That’s the story: a general trend upward from pandemic lows. How much and how quickly? Well, the group projects $602 million in fees in 2023, a return to where we started in 2013, beginning that long climb back to the billion-dollar mark. Here’s hoping it doesn’t take as long this time.

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Editor’s Note: Take a look at recent coverage of our Hospitality Giants most admired firms of 2023 below. AvroKO tops the list followed by Yabu Pushelberg, and Rockwell Group.

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Growth Potential Over Next 2 Years

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Methodology

The Interior Design Giants annual business survey comprises the largest firms ranked by interior design fees for the 12-month period ending December 31, 2022. The listings are generated from only those surveyed. To be recognized as a top 100, Rising, Healthcare, or Hospitality Giant, you must meet the following criteria: Have at least one office location in North America, and generate at least 25% of your interior design fee income in North America. Firms that do not meet the criteria are ranked on our International Giants list. Interior design fees include those attributed to:

1. All aspects of a firm’s in­terior design practice, from strategic planning and programming to design and project management.

2. Fees paid to a firm for work performed by employees and independent contractors who are “full-time staff equivalent.”

Interior design fees do not include revenues paid to a firm and remitted to subcontractors who are not con­sid­ered full-time staff equivalent. For example, certain firms attract work that is subcontracted to a local firm. The originating firm may collect all the fees and re­tain a management or generation fee, paying the remainder to the performing firm. The amounts paid to the latter are not included in fees of the collecting firm when determining its ranking. Ties are broken by rank from last year. Where applicable, all per­cent­ages are based on responding Giants, not their total number. 

All research conducted by ThinkLab, the research division of SANDOW Design Group.