By: Jack Lee
Wuhan, China, October 2026. This October, SKP presents A Decade, Refined, an exhibition tracing a decade of architectural and design evolution within SKP’s broader 20-year brand journey. Through architecture and design, the exhibition explores the transformation of SKP’s identity and its evolving relationship 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 the forthcoming SKP Hangzhou and SKP Guangzhou.
The exhibition takes its theme from a Chinese proverb about dedicating ten years to refining a single sword. The idea speaks to more than two decades of accumulated thinking, refinement and experience across different cities, scales and contexts, and to an architectural language that continues to evolve.
Presented by SKP and developed with its longstanding architectural partner Sybarite, A Decade, Refined takes its cue from an idea embedded within the environment itself: architecture as a journey.
SKP Wuhan and K Avenue were conceived around the act of the promenade, a sequence of spaces, encounters and experiences that unfold through movement. Extending eastwards along the Chu River, K Avenue takes the experience of SKP beyond the department store and into the city, bringing a concentration of flagship architecture into the intimacy of a human-scaled promenade.
A Decade, Refined follows the same principle.
Tracing the architectural evolution of SKP since the transformation of SKP Beijing 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 towards the next generation of destinations in Hangzhou and Guangzhou.
A Shared Architectural Language
The story begins before the opening of SKP Beijing, when Sybarite was selected through a competition held by SKP and MAD Network to transform an existing 140,000-square-metre regional shopping mall into a new luxury department store.
Working together, SKP and Sybarite approached the project as more than a redevelopment. Architecture, interiors, branding, graphics, packaging, wayfinding and spatial choreography were conceived as parts of one cohesive framework, establishing the foundations of a new luxury retail identity.
Central to this was the SKP Curve, a geometry formed from two parallel lines connected by tangential curves. Conceived as both a spatial device and subliminal branding mechanism, it established a recognisable language capable of working from the smallest detail to the scale of a building.
As Torquil McIntosh, Co-Founder of Sybarite, explains: “We wanted customers to recognise SKP emotionally before consciously understanding why.”
Continuity without Repetition
Rather than becoming a fixed formula, that language has continued to evolve, with each SKP responding to the particularities of its site and context. In Xi’an, it was translated to a new scale and culturally significant setting, extending the SKP language to the façade for the first time. In Chengdu, the department store expanded into 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 relationships between luxury retail, culture, technology and storytelling.
From Department Store to City
Today, SKP Wuhan and K Avenue extend that thinking into the city. Approximately 60% of the existing Wuhan structure was retained and transformed, while K Avenue continues the experience eastwards along the Chu River through a landscaped promenade of 42 luxury flagship stores. Architecture, landscape and movement come together as a journey between department store and city.
It is this idea of progression that sits at the heart of the exhibition. Each SKP has built upon what came before while responding to a different city and context, evolving not only as an architectural proposition, but as a model for contemporary luxury retail.
The Next Chapter
In the coming years, the journey will continue in Hangzhou and Guangzhou. Hangzhou expands SKP into an integrated destination for retail, hospitality, residential, leisure and wellness, while 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 towards what comes next, recognising a decade of collaboration, experimentation and refinement while leaving the path ahead deliberately open.
