1 · Position
The Louis stands on Wujiang Road in Shanghai's central business district: a boat-shaped building with an elegant prow, a hull worked in metallic Monogram, and upper levels stacked to read as historic trunks. Two floors are given to *Visionary Journeys*, an exhibition designed by Shohei Shigematsu of OMA — opening with *Trunkscape*, an archway of Monogram trunks, then rooms for scent, sport, literature and craft: the Olfactive Room of archival toiletry cases, the Book Room for Gaston-Louis Vuitton with his typewriter and a trunk turned into a library, a Sports Gallery, and an Artisan Studio where craftsmen work in front of visitors with the house's *Louisette* tools. Le Café Louis Vuitton is on the third deck under the Michelin-starred Leonardo Zambrino, with a menu made only for Shanghai. The shop is on the second floor.
2 · ⚑ Why the order matters
The exhibition comes first and the shop comes last, and entry is free. Everywhere else in this group the retail is the point and everything else supports it; here two floors of museum are the reason to come and the boutique is the last room on the way out. The Library files it in Department Stores & Food Halls because that is where the register put it, but it is really a fourth thing: a brand museum with a shop attached, and the closest relative in this register is not Harrods but a house that charges nothing and books you in advance.
3 · The maritime argument
The form is not decoration. Louis Vuitton built trunks for transoceanic voyages, and Shanghai has been a port since the sixth century and a treaty port since 1843 — the *Gateway to the East*. The building says both things at once, and the exhibition opens with a dual timeline of the family craft and the maritime history that carried it.
4 · ⚑ Two corrections the Library owes
First: an earlier version of this entry described Le Café V and Sugalabo V in Osaka, which is a different subject entirely. The Osaka café of February 2020 was Louis Vuitton's first restaurant; The Louis is a Shanghai building of 2025. The error is recorded rather than quietly replaced. Second: The Louis is reported as planned for about two years only. Under §22 the Library does not describe what has not happened, but it must state what is scheduled to end: this entry may become a historic record before most of Part X is written.