Louis Vuitton Visionary Journeys | OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture

Visionary Journeys is the first installment of OMA/Shohei Shigematsu and Louis Vuitton’s collaborative partnership on the architectural identity for the Visionary Journey exhibition concept.

Led by Partner Shohei Shigematsu and Project Architect Jesse Catalano, the exhibition strategy constructs a scenographic experience recontextualizing historic and contemporary pieces through dreamlike environments reflecting the Maison’s pillars of savoir-faire, innovation, and creativity.

The most defining designs or moments of the Maison are quite literally translated into the environments containing them. Five thematic rooms—"Trunkscape”, “Origins”, “Iconic Bags”, “Collaboration”, and “Souvenirs” —is constructed using a specific display typology informed by its contents. Elements and techniques such as structural innovations, boundless archival formats, material qualities, and iconographies are extracted and translated into a kit of new parts for each room.

Trunkscape marks the beginning of the Louis Vuitton story with an installation constructed with the Courrier Lozine 90 trunk, the seminal product that represents the history of craft and innovation at the brand’s core. While the trunk embodies a sense of stability, we destabilize it to conceive a new environment. 96 trunks are assembled into an arch showcasing structural integrity, strength, and simultaneous lightness. Highlighting the ingenuity and quality of construction, each trunk module is built with genuine components—wood, Louis Vuitton’s iconic monogram canvas and authentic metallic details. A custom metallic ring discreetly holds the units in place. The resulting trunkscape is surrounded by screens that expand the surface for storytelling and transport viewers through a captivating portal into the exhibition.

Origins presents the story of the earliest founders of the Maison, highlighting the specific and notable contributions that Louis Vuitton, Georges Vuitton, Gaston Louis Vuitton, and their descendants made to the Maison. A collective history of creative minds is displayed in a cabinet of curiosities, an inhabitable archive of hundreds of document replicas and 42 physical artifacts. Rather than a static display of past relics on walls and plinths, a hybrid display of flat and three-dimensional artifacts, cases, text, and video screens are scattered across a three-dimensional grid armature. The open library wraps up and around the room, enclosing the viewers in a cloud of memories, knowledge, and imagination that compose the visionary narratives of Louis Vuitton.

Iconic Bags is an excursion through the brand’s most iconic bags that mark significant moments in the history of the Maison: Speedy and Keepall, Alma, Petite Malle, and Noe. LV Icons, 21 bags and 2 ready-to-wear looks are organized into four clusters of objects encased in clear acrylic bubbles that emphasize each bag’s shape and form. Suspended in space, the spheres of Louis Vuitton’s influence construct a constellation of timeless inventions and their collective story.

Collaboration displays the evolution and creativity of the brand through the collaborations built upon the foundation of an LV icon, the Speedy and Keepall. The Speedy and Keepall serves as a canvas for collaborators to give new life and narratives to the timeless bag, recontextualizing it to contemporary times. Drawing from the infinite possibilities through collaboration and the essence of bag as sculpture, an environment is created using 184 chrome-dipped bags that serve both as display objects and backdrops for ever-changing content. A rotating carousel of 7 original artifacts is synced to a semi-circle of animated screens that transform the reflective room into a cinematic showcase of each collaborator and the distinct artwork and pattern from the object.

Souvenirs Room expresses the fun and playful attitude of Louis Vuitton in an oversized vending machine of the brand ephemera as exhibition specific objects including posters, bags, stickers, and postcards. Unique to the inaugural exhibition in Bangkok, the design draws from the aggregation of diversity and color of the city’s night markets. A display screen and vending machine are integrated into a grid of vibrant colored lights that reflect off mirrored walls to fill the room with the colorful Louis Vuitton universe.

Project Credits
Location: Bangkok, Thailand
Client: Louis Vuitton
Curation: Louis Vuitton Malletier
Creative Concept & Scenography: OMA New York
Partner-in-Charge: Shohei Shigematsu
Project Architect: Jesse Catalano
Team: Blake Matthew Kem, Niccolo Pietro Baldi, Timothy Tse
Executive Production: Kingsmen C.M.T.I. Plc., K2
Identity & Graphics: Special Offer, Inc.
Lighting Design: John Torres