In the heart of Shanghai, Louis Vuitton presents The Louis, a hybrid between boutique, café, exhibition and yes, a ship. A living installation where the Maison’s history is reinterpreted through a monumental staging that interweaves past, present and future. An immersive tale with a narrative that transforms the retail space into a unique experience.
Designed as the bow of a monumental vessel, The Louis breaks into the urban landscape as a hybrid structure that challenges architectural conventions. The overlapping decks evoke the Maison’s famed travel trunks, while the metallic monogram covering the structure and the logo as an anchor on the ground acts as emblems of a narrative that sails between the symbolic and the physical. A bold and performative proposal that fuses Shanghai’s port heritage with Louis Vuitton’s expansive imagination.
From the exterior terrace, where the furniture creates an atmosphere of urban navigation, to the interiors clad in wood and warm light, Le Café Louis Vuitton serves as an intimate pause in the midst of the journey. A stop suspended between art books, flavours and nautical details that translate the voyage into a slow journey of pleasure. Inside the structure, we find Visionary Journeys, which accompanies the visit as an expanded and sensorial timeline, articulated over two levels.
Designed by Hohei Shigematsu-OMA, the exhibition transforms the Maison’s archive into an immersive scenography. From an installation of suspended trunks floating over a moving landscape, to rooms that narrate Louis Vuitton’s deep relationship with the art of travel, each object, image and story is presented from an emotional rather than chronological memory. Emblematic pieces that present a living legacy that continues to inspire the brand’s imagination. Like letters sent from different times, each fragment here finds its new journey.
