A Decade of Architectural Refinement by SKP & Sybarite

Wuhan, China — October 2026 — This October, SKP presents A Decade, Refined — the first exhibition to chart a decade of architectural and design evolution within SKP's broader 20-year brand trajectory. Through architecture and design, the exhibition examines how SKP's identity has transformed and deepened its relationship with cities across China.

Opening in the atrium of SKP Wuhan, the exhibition runs alongside the third SKP × WWD Global Fashion and Beauty Summit and offers the first public glimpse of the forthcoming SKP Hangzhou and SKP Guangzhou developments.

The exhibition takes its theme from the Chinese proverb — the idea of devoting ten years to sharpening a single blade. Reinterpreted for SKP, it speaks to more than two decades of accumulated insight, refinement and experience across different cities, scales and contexts — and to an architectural vocabulary that keeps evolving.

Presented by SKP and developed with its longstanding architectural partner Sybarite, A Decade, Refined takes its cue from an idea already embedded in the built fabric: architecture as a journey.

SKP Wuhan and K Avenue were designed around the promenade as a core spatial device — a sequence of rooms, encounters and experiences that unfold as one moves through. Extending east along the Chu River, K Avenue carries the SKP experience beyond the department store and into the urban realm, bringing an unprecedented concentration of flagship architecture into the intimate scale of a pedestrian boulevard.

A Decade, Refined follows the same underlying principle.

Tracing SKP's architectural development since the SKP Beijing brand transformation in 2016, the exhibition brings together architectural models, drawings, archive material, photography and design details to reveal not simply where SKP is today, but how it arrived there — from Beijing through Xi'an, Chengdu and Wuhan, and toward the next generation of destinations in Hangzhou and Guangzhou.

A Shared Architectural Vocabulary

The story predates the opening of SKP Beijing, when Sybarite was selected through a competition run by SKP and MAD Network to transform an existing 140,000-square-metre regional shopping mall into a new luxury department store.

Working in close collaboration, SKP and Sybarite treated the project as more than a standard redevelopment. Architecture, interiors, branding, graphics, packaging, wayfinding and spatial choreography were conceived as interlocking parts of one cohesive system — establishing the foundation of a new luxury retail identity.

At the centre of this is the SKP Curve — a geometry of two parallel lines joined by tangential curves. Designed as both a spatial tool and a subconscious branding mechanism, it created a recognisable language capable of working at every scale, from the tiniest detail to the full building.

As Torquil McIntosh, Co-Founder of Sybarite, explains: "We wanted customers to recognise SKP emotionally before consciously understanding why."

Continuity without Replication

Rather than hardening into a fixed formula, that language has kept evolving, with each SKP responding to the specificities of its site and cultural context. In Xi'an, it was translated to a new scale and a culturally significant setting, bringing the SKP language to the facade for the first time. In Chengdu, the department store expanded into a subterranean masterplan, with 99% of the development built below ground and an extensive public landscape — SKP Park — developed in partnership with Field Operations.

Alongside this, SKP-S — curated in collaboration with Gentle Monster — introduced an experimental counterpart to the core SKP offer, exploring more subversive, episodic relationships between luxury retail, culture, technology and storytelling.

From Department Store to City

Today, SKP Wuhan and K Avenue carry that thinking further 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 merge into a continuous journey between department store and city.

It is this idea of progression that sits 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 project, but as a pioneering model for contemporary luxury retail.

The Next Chapter

In the years to come, the journey continues in Hangzhou and Guangzhou. Hangzhou expands SKP into an integrated destination for retail, hospitality, residential, leisure and wellness. Guangzhou opens SKP more explicitly 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 look toward what comes next — acknowledging a decade of collaboration, experimentation and refinement while leaving the path ahead deliberately open.

Media Contact: soizic peyrusse

Email: soizic.peyrusse@sybarite.com