Through architecture and design, the exhibition explores how SKP’s identity has transformed and how it has deepened its engagement with cities across China.
Opening in the atrium of SKP Wuhan, the exhibition coincides with the third SKP × WWD Global Fashion and Beauty Summit and offers the first public preview of SKP Hangzhou and SKP Guangzhou — the brand’s next two major developments.
Taking its theme from the Chinese saying — the idea of spending ten years perfecting a single sword — the exhibition frames SKP’s architectural journey as a sustained act of refinement: more than two decades of accumulated insight across different cities, scales and contexts, distilled into a design language that keeps evolving.
Presented by SKP and developed with its longstanding architectural partner Sybarite, A Decade, Refined is built around an idea already embedded in SKP’s built environment: architecture as a journey.
SKP Wuhan and K Avenue were conceived around the promenade as a core spatial strategy — a sequence of spaces, encounters and experiences that unfold through movement. Stretching east along the Chu River, K Avenue takes the SKP experience beyond the department store and into the city, bringing an unprecedented concentration of flagship architecture into the human scale of a pedestrian promenade.
A Decade, Refined operates on the same principle.
Tracing SKP’s architectural evolution since the transformation of SKP Beijing in 2016, the exhibition brings together architectural models, drawings, archive material, photography and design details to show not just where SKP is today, but how it got there — from Beijing through Xi’an, Chengdu and Wuhan, and toward the next generation of destinations in Hangzhou and Guangzhou.
A Cohesive Design System
The story begins before SKP Beijing opened, when Sybarite was selected through a competition held by SKP and MAD Network to convert an existing 140,000-square-metre regional shopping mall into a new luxury department store.
SKP and Sybarite approached the project as more than a redevelopment. Architecture, interiors, branding, graphics, packaging, wayfinding and spatial choreography were developed as parts of one integrated framework — laying the foundations for a new luxury retail identity.
Central to this is the SKP Curve — a geometry of two parallel lines connected by tangential curves. Conceived as both a spatial device and a subliminal branding tool, it created a recognisable language capable of working at every scale, from the smallest detail to the building itself.
As Torquil McIntosh, Co-Founder of Sybarite, puts it: “We wanted customers to recognise SKP emotionally before consciously understanding why.”
Evolution, Not Imitation
Rather than becoming a fixed template, that design language has continued to evolve, with each SKP responding to the particularities of its site and cultural context. In Xi’an, it was scaled up and adapted to a culturally significant setting, bringing the SKP language to the facade for the first time. In Chengdu, the department store was reimagined as a subterranean masterplan, with 99% of the development below ground and an extensive public landscape — SKP Park — developed in collaboration with Field Operations.
In parallel, SKP-S — curated in collaboration with Gentle Monster — introduced an experimental counterpart to SKP, exploring more subversive, episodic intersections of luxury retail, culture, technology and storytelling.
From Department Store to Urban Realm
Today, SKP Wuhan and K Avenue extend that thinking into the city. Approximately 60% of the existing Wuhan structure was retained and adaptively transformed, while K Avenue continues the experience east along the Chu River through a landscaped promenade of 42 luxury flagship stores. Architecture, landscape and pedestrian movement come together as a continuous journey between department store and city.
It is this idea of progression that lies at the heart of the exhibition. Each SKP has built on what came before while responding to a different city and context — evolving not just as an architectural proposition, but as a pioneering model for contemporary luxury retail.
What’s Next
In the coming years, the journey continues in Hangzhou and Guangzhou. Hangzhou expands SKP into an integrated destination spanning retail, hospitality, residential, leisure and wellness. Guangzhou opens SKP more deliberately to the city through terraces, roof gardens, landscape and a new public piazza.
A Decade, Refined brings these chapters together for the first time. It is both a reflection on the journey so far and a view toward what comes next — recognising a decade of collaboration, experimentation and refinement while leaving the road ahead intentionally open.
