Location: Jardim Paulista, São Paulo, Brazil

Design Team: Roberto Somlo Arquitetura

Area: 536 m²

Year: 2025

Photography: Marcos Vilas Boas and Estudio Peso Arquitectura

Design Features: On Oscar Freire Street in São Paulo's Jardim Paulista district, Roberto Somlo Arquitetura transformed a repeatedly altered building into VEJA's first store in Brazil. Rather than concealing the accumulated fabric, the project removes partitions, ceilings, former stairs and redundant services. Brickwork, beams, slabs and structural scars become the principal interior, turning entry into a reading of a city that continually rebuilds over itself.

The ground floor sits slightly below the pavement and is released as an open display hall. A portion of the second-floor slab was removed beside the street to create a double-height threshold behind the glazed façade. Long white shelves hover against mottled brick, while concrete plinths and timber benches maintain generous visual distance among products, old surfaces and visitors.

New stairs, displays, cash wrap, café and repair counters are cast in board-formed reinforced concrete. Formwork joints, timber grain and pouring marks remain visible, continuing the Paulista modernist emphasis on material truth. The stripped original lift shaft and the new stair form a precise vertical core beneath a light grid of linear fixtures that tempers the weight of brick and concrete.

Programme unfolds over three levels. The ground floor combines the main product lines with a cobbler's workshop; the second floor presents performance footwear and special collections alongside payment and storage areas; the third accommodates a terrace, event room, pantry and staff facilities. A treadmill, collaborations, residencies, screenings and exhibitions extend the store beyond conventional retail.

Its strongest value for architectural travellers lies in the direct relationship between material and city. Full-height glazing cuts open the formerly inward building, old brick records successive campaigns of alteration, and new concrete moves through those traces with deliberate order. On the roof, Lina Bo Bardi's Girafa furniture introduces Brazilian design history into an everyday pause above the street.

The project's restraint is also a resource strategy. Existing structure is retained, subtraction replaces decorative addition, and the visible repair service connects architecture to VEJA's Clean, Repair, Collect programme. Luxury here is not a polished surface but the clarity with which old brick, new concrete, timber, light and occupation remain legible in one section through time.

Design Team: Roberto Somlo Arquitetura is led by São Paulo architect Roberto Somlo, a 2000 graduate of FAUUSP. His published work ranges from urban commercial transformations to houses and small buildings in the Mantiqueira and Bocaina landscapes, with recurring attention to existing conditions, local materials, nature and long-term use. Somlo led design and coordination for the store, with Laura Rosenbusch and Gregório Rosenbusch on the project team; Venta Arquitetos also identifies its role as collaborator.

Lightworks Iluminação developed the lighting, Kléber Matheus Studio produced the neon installation, Praxis Engenharia advised on structure, Pro RAC Tecnologia Térmica and Engenho Soluções em Engenharia contributed specialist systems, saeng delivered construction and DOX managed the project. Their coordination keeps demolition, reinforcement, concrete casting, exposed services and lighting precise without turning the old building into a uniform new surface.