SKP Chengdu follows the success of Department Stores in Beijing and Xi’an, it is designed to become an unparalleled landmark for fashion, tech and art and a new milestone for the city. The mixed use masterplan is a holistic and collaborative vision by Sybarite, realised with James Corner Field Operations, Arup, Speirs Major, Buro Happold, Eckersley O’Callaghan and The Fountain Workshop over a three year period.
At SKP Chengdu, SKP Park, SKP-N and SKP-S come together to conjure an undeniable sense of interconnectedness: an ingenious combination of urban park and underground buildings. SKP Chengdu is a TOD (Transit Oriented Development): it creates dense, walkable, and mixed-use spaces near transits that support vibrant, sustainable and equitable communities.
Casting our minds back to 2019, SKP-S successfully pushed and challenged what we think we know in retail terms by presenting the otherworldliness of moving to Mars in Beijing and the nostalgia of returning to a devastated Earth for rebirth in Xi’an in 2021. In continuance, Chengdu SKP-S proposes a hypothetical utopia where we can live in equilibrium through a Gate of Transition which opens up the ultimate in parallel time and space.
SKP Chengdu is a place shaped by familiarity, possibility, and instinct – a place of fierce optimism. It is where destiny is calling us. A story of the journey of humanity, the possibilities and challenges of endless curiosity and it captures humankind’s instinctive desire to explore. As such, the signature SKP curve and architecture has too evolved since its last iteration.
There are many worlds within SKP Chengdu which firstly reveal themselves upon arrival to the park and its botanical quilt of gardens: comprising 33 crafted landscapes and scenic spots in nature. Regardless of how many times you enter the park, you may never follow the same path – the stories you encounter will always be unique. The retail journey follows suit.
The magnificence of the SKP Park lies in an uninterrupted vista without a hint of what lies below. The parallel connection of park and corresponding plunging architecture emerges as quarried into the landscape akin to a canyon as one descends. A sunken world of retail, hospitality, tech, experience and art are constantly in motion, evolving and changing, and yet underpinned by a common narrative – a celebration of diversity living under one ‘botanical roof’.
SKP Chengdu represents individuality in harmony and a parallel world where everything comes together to showcase what is possible in this journey from elegance to energy: SKP to SKP-S.
“I see SKP Park Chengdu like a symphony, a lengthy composition with several movements that have rhythm, a pulse and that crescendo every so often. Our ambition in designing this immense destination whose sum of parts come together to evolve the dexterous SKP language and retail offer that we conceived some ten years ago on an exponential level”. Torquil McIntosh, Co-Founder, Sybarite
