Sybarite

A Sybarite is a devotee of luxury and pleasure with an appreciation for the finer things in life.

This name fits particularly well for an architectural and design studio that has worked to redefine luxury experiences in retail and hospitality over the past two decades.

Founded in 2002, by London based architects Torquil McIntosh and Simon Mitchell, Sybarite was built on a foundation of monobrand stores and first appeared on our radar with their gorgeous avant-garde work for Marni, which combined sculptural forms with colour and texture.

Over the years they created more than 250 unique store designs for Marni, each with their own distinct character, in relation to location and cultural context, but still identifiably Marni.

Sybarite continues to design monobrand stores and flagships, most notably for Ferrari. Their concepts for the flagship stores in Marranello and Milan are sumptuous examples of brand storytelling that bring the materiality of the factory to the shopfloor and imagine it in a different context. It is also about taking the processes of Ferrari and bringing them into a luxury retail store.

However, their most groundbreaking work is in the field of department stores, shopping malls and masterplanning, mainly because of the sheer scale of ambition and the constantly evolving format represented in these projects.

Ten years ago, Sybarite began working in Asia, with the transformation of a shopping mall in Beijing, China, into SKP Beijing, a luxury department store. More than a simple refurbishment, the project was conceived as total repositioning and rebranding, in order to facilitate a step change and a sense of place for SKP that will stand the test of time and build on a legacy.

Following the success of SKP Beijing, Sybarite created a new 20-storey, luxury landmark SKP store in Xi’an, China’s former capital, currently China’s largest luxury department store with over 1000 brands, as well as extensive hospitality, events places, and pop up opportunities.

SKP-S Beijing opened in 2019, located opposite the original SKP store. SKP-S is a deliberately new type of department store: a futuristic shopping experience, merging luxury retail with immersive environments under different ‘Otherworldly’ storytelling themes. The concept of SKP-S is as a platform for brands to imaginatively express their ‘alter ego’ in a laboratory-like environment, which embraces ‘experience per square metre’ and purposefully pushes the boundaries of retail experience.

Even more ambitious is Sybarite’s masterplanning and design development for SKP Chengdu, which opened at the end of 2022 after only three years of construction during the Pandemic.

SKP Chengdu is an exceptional retail concept that combines a vast urban parkland and a sunken mixed use development, including separate SKP and SKP-S department stores, as well as two avenues of luxury boutiques and restaurants.

Where SKP-S Beijing featured Mars, Xian featured ‘Rebirth on Earth’, Chengdu SKP-S is the next chapter, presenting a “Utopian vision of a Parallel World.

Sybarite is also working on a new generation of community driven shopping malls, such as DT51 in China.

Further SKP projects are in the pipeline, with the stunning SKP Wuhan main department store already open.  The complementary  K Avenue retail promenade which sits by the riverfront is set to launch next year to complete the masterplan

If you are looking for an architectural studio with the imagination and vision to conceive a different approach to retail experiences, as well as the capability and experience to realise it at all scales, then Sybarite are a world class choice.