Inside Christian de Portzamparc’s showstopping House of Dior Beijing: ‘sculptural, structural, alive’

In Beijing's ritzy Sanlitun district, where luxury retail jostles for attention amid the capital’s kinetic sprawl, Christian de Portzamparc has conjured House of Dior Beijing, the Pritzker Prize laureate's third commission for the French house after Seoul (2015) and Geneva (2024). From every angle, the building – head-turning in its outer sheath of gigantic white petals – is his most ambitious: a freestanding temple to fashion that channels the very gesture of couture into architectural form.

Unlike its Korean and Swiss counterparts – which share the same petal vocabulary but emerged from existing streetscapes with two or three facades apiece – Dior's largest store in China stands exposed on all four sides within Kengo Kuma's Taikoo Li Sanlitun North development. This 360-degree visibility presented Portzamparc with both opportunity and dilemma. Early iterations that wrapped petals continuously around the perimeter proved visually overwhelming. The solution? Alternating those signature resin shells – 14 in total, each shaped differently – with soaring panels of handcrafted golden glass tiles whose subtly varied surfaces shimmer and breathe between the sculptural volumes.

Inside House of Dior, Beijing

The petal forms themselves trace their lineage to the Dior atelier, capturing that decisive moment when flat fabric transforms into three-dimensional silhouette through cutting and draping. In Beijing, Portzamparc pushes this vocabulary further, sculpting each 65-foot-tall element to evoke the caryatids of Athens’ ancient Acropolis: graceful, vertical, dignified. Built using resin-casting techniques in a factory located just outside Beijing, the petals spent 18 months in production.

The golden tile panels – a nod to imperial China, where such hues were reserved for royalty – required equally exacting craftsmanship. Their placement creates crucial breathing space, breaking the mass while generating a play of shadows that shifts throughout the day. At night, the building becomes a lantern, petals backlit from within, curves casting elegant shadows across the plaza.

‘This project has taken four years, and it's a dream come true,’ says Delphine Arnault, chairman and CEO of Christian Dior Couture. That dream rises five stories filled with clothes and accessories: the ground level hosts Monsieur Dior, Anne-Sophie Pic's restaurant in a separate wing with after-hours access; floors one and two present the women's Dior universe; three belongs to men’s.

The top floor presents an OMA-conceived space populated by white toiled mannequins and a dramatic red ball gown. This leads into a soigné set of VIP salons dressed in hand-embroidered dandelion wall panels in yellow and blue in one salon, and gently indented botanical motifs in another, alongside access to an outdoor terrace.

Connecting these dreamy spaces is a circular white staircase that spirals upward, punctuated by a chandelier of clay petals – an intimate echo of the building's larger gesture – that clink softly with the slightest air movement.

Glass vitrines at each landing display miniature Dior creations, while throughout the interiors, works by Chinese artists animate the rooms. Xiyao Wang and Xu Zhen contribute paintings, Hong Hao created special commissions including three artworks in the restaurant that celebrate red as Beijing’s ceremonial colour, while furniture from Claude Lalanne, Franck Evennou, and Gio Ponti punctuates the spaces.

Throughout, Portzamparc's signature preoccupations assert themselves: the porous facade inviting light and views to permeate inward and outward, the commitment to opening constrained spaces, the calibration between solid and void. It is, incidentally, a quality visible across his Chinese work, from the slender columns and apertures punctuating the China National Convention Center to the north in Olympic Green to this Sanlitun venue.

For Portzamparc, whose portfolio spans cultural landmarks from the Philharmonie Luxembourg to the Shanghai Opera House, the Dior commissions represent something both particular and personal. When he completed the LVMH Tower on New York's 57th Street in 1999, Philip Johnson told him, ‘You are very lucky to have a client like Bernard Arnault’, a tacit recognition of an appreciative patron with both resources and the rare willingness to take creative risks. Two decades on, that relationship has evolved into what Portzamparc has described as ‘an architectural style dedicated to Dior’ – a collection united by principle, yet irresistibly responsive to place.

The result in Beijing? A building that mirrors the couture inside by taking something flat and making it sculptural, structural, alive.

House of Dior Beijing, N6 Taikoo Li Sanlitun North, Chaoyang District, Beijing

dior.com