Reopened on 23 September, the Hermès boutique at Taikoo Li brings together the Maison’s sixteen métiers. RDAI offers an architectural reading attentive to the context of Sichuan.
In Chengdu, Hermès’s expansion goes through an existing address. The Maison announces the reopening, on 23 September 2026, of its renovated and enlarged boutique in the open-air complex of Taikoo Li, where it has been located since 2014. The sixteen métiers are now brought together in an interior rethought by RDAI.
The city as a project datum
Hermès describes work on light, shadow and lines. Sculptural textures, furniture of organic forms and natural tones make up the announced vocabulary. The project intends to interpret the architecture and cultural traditions of Sichuan within a contemporary framework.
These are the intentions and elements communicated by the Maison. They allow a method to be identified, but do not amount to an account of a visit. The file consulted gives neither a detailed floor area nor an exhaustive description of materials that would make it possible to assess each design choice.
Enlargement as an editorial question
Returning to a place occupied for twelve years introduces a different temporality from the opening of a new boutique. The address retains a commercial history while changing in capacity and presentation. To assess the project, one must therefore look at what the transformation makes possible: the relationship between the métiers, their legibility and the way of moving between them.
The local reference also needs to be examined in its details. An interior can evoke a region through its colours; it can also express a more precise relationship to light, to material or to the succession of spaces. These degrees of interpretation are not equivalent.
In Chengdu, the documentation gives priority to this second register, that of an architecture that organises perception. The interest of the address will depend on the capacity of these choices to hold together the diversity of the Hermès métiers and the singularity of the place, beyond a general discourse on local anchoring.
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