Retail 2023 · Delivered
Saint Laurent
Client-side project management for a travel retail boutique, holding the house concept to account through execution.
Project facts
- Location
- T1 Paris CDG Airport, France
- Year
- 2023
- Status
- Delivered
- Role & scope
- Selected professional experience: Client-side project management
The brief
A house concept, dropped into an airport
A travel retail boutique in Terminal 1 at Paris CDG. The concept was fixed by the house and not open to reinterpretation: black marble portal, gold lettering, lit shelving, a single central display island.
The role was on the client side, not to design the store, but to make sure the store that opened was the one that had been drawn, inside a terminal that imposes its own rules on every millimetre and every night of work.
Concept
Holding the concept where the terminal argues with it
Airport shells rarely match a retail concept. Ceiling heights, fire strategy, structural returns and the airport’s own signage lines all pull at the drawing, and each conflict has to be resolved without letting the house identity erode.
The portal was the point of tension: full-height stone against a shell that offered neither the height nor the fixings the standard detail assumed. It was re-detailed with the house architects rather than reduced, so the storefront still reads as the brand does everywhere else.
In travel retail the concept is not the hard part. Keeping it intact through the terminal’s rules is.
What this covered
Client-side project management, from the shell survey through to opening.
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Concept compliance
Checking every drawing and every substitution against the house standard.
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Airport coordination
Permits, access, night-work windows and the terminal’s technical constraints.
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Tendering and contractor follow-up
Packages issued, costed, awarded and tracked against the opening date.
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Site supervision
Weekly site presence, mock-up validation and resolution of shell conflicts.
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Snagging and handover
Punch list, close-out and handover to the retail teams.
Delivery
Built at night, in a terminal that never closed
Work in an operating terminal happens in windows: deliveries escorted airside, hoarding up and down each night, noise and dust limits enforced by the airport rather than negotiated with it.
The store opened on the date fixed with the house, with the stone portal, the lit shelving and the central island as drawn.
The storefront, as opened
Expertise applied