RICK OWENS’ REFUGE

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Created for Shanghai Fashion Week as part of Moncler’s City of Genius, this film explores the design and construction of ‘Refuge’ — a ski shelter conceived by Rick Owens in collaboration with HBA Architects. Displayed within the structure itself, the visual narrative highlights the synergy between brutalist aesthetics and adaptive engineering, drawing inspiration from Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouvé. Designed to adapt to unstable terrain, the Refuge features adjustable footings, captured through visuals that echo its functional elegance and raw materiality. Storyboard design, visual development, and compositing were crafted to reinforce the architectural language and physical presence of the shelter.

DESIGN DEVELOPMENT

I was given complete creative freedom by Rick Owens to select the views, draft the storyboard, and composite the final film. Early conversations explored the idea of situating the Refuge within an Arctic landscape, a direction reflected in the initial storyboard shown below. However, the concept ultimately evolved toward a non-specific setting - one that exists somewhere between Earth and space. This decision allowed the film to heighten the structure’s abstract presence and brutalist form, drawing from the atmospheric and temporal language of Andréi Tarkovsky as a key reference.