5. Post-Part II – Designing in a House of Mirrors
I remember standing before the final exhibition models, watching strangers peer into them like crystal balls.
Some nodded. Some passed by without a glance. It was over—or just beginning.
Not long after, I accepted an offer from Sybarite, a London-based studio known for high-end retail and hospitality.
Their projects were sleek, global, unapologetically luxurious.
I didn’t go because I was drawn to luxury.
I went because I wanted to understand it.
At Sybarite, everything moved faster.
We weren’t sketching poetry anymore—we were manufacturing desire.
Every curve, every fixture, every tile had to seduce.
I worked on projects across continents:
Flagship boutiques in Heathrow.
Pop-ups in Shanghai.
Department stores with glossy atriums and digital ceilings.
Each brief arrived with a brand bible, a target demographic, and an exacting vision of “exclusivity.”
The work was demanding—but clear.
We delivered. Clients were pleased.
And for a while, so was I.
It wasn’t that I disliked the design process.
I loved the rhythm of it—the logic of a façade coming together,
the satisfaction of solving a spatial puzzle no one else could quite articulate.
But something began to emerge.
Luxury, I realised, wasn’t just a material palette.
It was an ideology—an architecture of exclusion.
We weren’t building cities.
We were building enclaves—sealed, curated, controlled.
Retail became theatre. Hospitality became spectacle.
And while the architecture was beautiful, it no longer asked why.
I worked on SKP, the department store empire stretching from Beijing to Chengdu.
We crafted immersive spaces, temples of consumption where everything—from scent to sightline—was engineered to entice.
But the repetition grew louder.
Every project had a script. Every elevation déjà vu.
Sometimes I’d stare at the renderings and ask myself:
Where does my voice go in all this?
When did design stop being a dialogue, and become a monologue of profit?
Yet I learned more than I expected.
At Sybarite, I led teams.
Presented to clients. Negotiated fees.
Coordinated across time zones and solved problems no textbook prepared me for.
I became fluent in the language of real-world architecture—
where spreadsheets matter as much as sketches, and clarity often trumps cleverness.
I even helped launch the studio’s website,
led outreach for new business in Greater China, and
learned how to navigate architectural diplomacy—to listen as much as to design.
These weren’t the lessons I’d hoped for.
But they made me sharper.
More decisive.
More attuned to how architecture flows through systems, not just minds.
Still, I never forgot why I started.
In quiet moments, I’d return to the memory that had stayed with me since the hutong—
that architecture, at its best, isn’t about display,
but about presence.
Not the kind that dazzles,
but the kind that lingers—gently, meaningfully—in the memory of those who pass through.
Sybarite taught me how to survive in a market-driven world.
But it also clarified what I did not want to become.
So I kept going—eyes open, pencil steady—
reminding myself that even in a world of noise,
it is still possible to design softly.