Global Outlook: São Paolo
Words Raul Barreneche
www.isayweinfeld.com
Through his radical rethinking of the bricks-and-mortar bookstore, Isay Weinfeld has given new meaning to the term Brazilian Amazon.
Livraria da Vila in the leafy, upscale São Paulo neighborhood of Jardins is more than just a bookstore. This outpost of a successful local mini chain hosts the requisite book signings and readings. But the shop’s packed calendar of in-store activities also boasts writing classes, wine tastings, and musical performances, from Broadway show tunes to jam sessions with Brazilian alternative rock acts and Swedish folk singers. The store’s façade, however, leaves no doubt that its focus is literary. One enters between pivoting bookshelves encased in glass—part door, part window, part bookcase—that span the full width of the store. When the cases are closed, one sees nothing but books from outside. When they are swung open, one still sees nothing but books, because inside the walls are lined floor-to-ceiling with shelves, all of them filled to capacity. This lively cultural spot and temple to the printed word is the work of one of Brazil’s top architects. Isay Weinfeld has designed some of the country’s chicest houses, restaurants, and shops, along with the luxurious Fasano Hotel nearby, which he designed with another São Paulo architect Marcio Kogan. Indeed, Livraria looks as sleek as any contemporary art gallery, and as stylish as the boutiques of Jardins where Brazilian bombshells browse the racks.
Weinfeld gut-renovated the two-story commercial building on a skinny 33-foot-wide-by-131-foot-long site. One of the architect’s earliest decisions was to open up the interior for better circulation and more effective display of merchandise. Creating an open plan required major structural alterations: inserting two-foot-deep steel transfer beams spanning in two directions and concealing new steel columns within the existing perimeter walls. The concrete-block supports beneath these new perimeter columns helped bolster the existing foundations. Weinfeld also expanded a partial subterranean parking garage, creating a full basement with the same footprint as the floors above.
That basement contains a children’s area filled with colorful beanbags and lined with bookshelves, along with a small auditorium where classes, lectures, readings, and performances take place. The ground floor, set back from the street behind a small plaza, is filled with books of all genres. CDs and DVDs and a small café occupy the second floor, reached by a staircase, constructed out of imbuia wood, beneath a slatted skylight in the reinforced concrete slab. Weinfeld cut voids between the floors and wrapped them with still more bookshelves, creating visual connections from floor to floor. There is an elliptical cutout between the ground floor and basement, which looks a bit like the coffered dome of a Baroque chapel; a rectangular opening between the first and second floors has the air of a James Turrell “Skyspace.” The idea behind these unexpected openings was simple: “Wherever one looks, one sees books,” says Weinfeld.
This inviting domestic vibe has paid off. Livraria’s owner and managing partner, Samuel Seibel, tells of scores of newly loyal customers staking out a home away from home, to have a coffee, enjoy a chat, listen to music. One regular, a 60-something retiree, who used to spend his days watching television, is now at Livraria twice a day, rain or shine, having picked up a habit he kicked long ago: reading. - RB
Lower Floor
Ground Floor
Custom imbuia bookcases rise from floor to ceiling, stretching for nearly a mile and containing more than 200,000 books. The look is one of “careful disarray,” says Weinfeld, which he believes puts customers at ease while browsing. Another unexpected ceiling opening, lined with books, creates a visual connection with the upper floor. Why? “Wherever one looks, one sees books,” says Weinfeld.
Upper Floor
Post A Comment