AIA Estúdio Stacks a Single-Level Ipanema Boutique into a Vertical Sequence Around a Spiral Stair

Retail moves usually go sideways: a brand outgrows its shop and takes the unit next door. Panō went up instead. The former Casa Panō ran its whole program on one level. The new store on Garcia D'Ávila Street in Ipanema, designed by AIA Estúdio under lead architect Alice Tepedino, spreads that program across a narrow multi-storey building of 260 m². That is a real constraint. Every customer who wants to reach the fitting rooms now has to climb, and every climb risks feeling like a chore.

What interests us is how the studio deals with that risk. They make vertical circulation the organizing idea of the project, and they give each floor a different atmosphere so that going up feels like a series of rooms you want to see. The result reads less like a shop with stairs and more like a stair with a shop arranged around it. The material palette is plaster, timber, rough stone and small-stone paving, used with restraint, and it carries the brand's identity without much signage.

A Storefront That Shows Its Stair

The facade is plain gray plaster with two large glazed openings stacked one above the other, and that plainness is a smart choice. The main element seen from the street is the white spiral stair, which sits directly behind the glass. The building tells passersby that it continues upward before they step inside. At dusk the lit interior turns the stair into a lantern, and the mango tree overhead does the decorating that a busier facade would otherwise attempt.

The stone benches in front give something back to the sidewalk. In Ipanema, shade and a place to sit are worth more than a clever sign, and the store offers both.

Paving the Threshold

The brand name is set into the small-stone pavement between two rounded benches, edged with a black mosaic border. The reference to Rio's patterned sidewalks is obvious, but it is handled quietly. The lettering is something you find on the ground rather than read on the wall, and fallen leaves partly cover it, which suits a brand built on linen and slowness.

Inside the window, a curved textured plaster counter and pale floor catch the same tree shadows that fall on the street. The line between sidewalk and shop is blurred on purpose. The ground plane flows in, and the light flows with it.

The Spiral Stair as Spine

Dark timber treads wind beside curved plaster walls, and the contrast between them is the core of the interior. The plaster softens the turn so the stair feels carved out of the walls rather than inserted into them. Seen from above, the treads fan out like a deck of cards, and the warm light picks out every edge.

The drawings show that a second, linear stair also serves the building, which frees the spiral to be the customer route. That is a sensible division. The spiral handles the experience and the straight run handles stock and staff, so the showpiece is never cluttered with service traffic.

Furniture Cut from the Ground

The display table is a live-edge timber slab resting on rough-hewn stone bases, and it sets the tone for the rest of the fit-out. Nothing looks fabricated. Pieces appear to be found, stacked or carved, and that keeps them from reading as typical retail fixtures. Recessed plaster niches hold ceramics, folded striped linens and loose stones, so merchandise and objects share the same shelf.

The risk with this approach is an overly styled rusticity. AIA Estúdio mostly avoids it by keeping the stone rough and the plaster smooth, which gives every surface a clear job instead of a mood.

Light from Above

Skylights and a glowing luminous ceiling panel do most of the atmospheric work. On one floor, leaf shadows slide across a pebble mosaic floor beneath a curved ceiling edge. On another, a round plaster platform sits under a backlit panel that reads almost like a moon. Each level gets its own kind of light, and this, more than finishes, is how the floors change character.

Details reward attention: a pale brick floor with engraved lettering, an organic-shaped mirror, garments on simple wall rails. The brand shows up underfoot and in reflections, rarely at eye level.

A Washroom Treated as a Room

The client bathroom gets the same care as the sales floors. A rough-cut stone basin cantilevers below a backlit mirror, and a brass tap sits against carved stone. The mirror frames a tree seen through a distant window, so even this small room keeps the street's greenery in view. It is a minor space, but it is where many retail interiors give up, and here the studio does not.

Fitting Rooms with a View

The fitting rooms sit high in the building, which is the right place for them. By the time you arrive, you have climbed through the store and seen most of it. Cream and sheer curtains enclose curved cubicles, a curved built-in bench runs alongside, and round and oval mirrors replace the usual harsh vertical slabs.

The row of cubicles opens onto a planted courtyard, with wooden stools and backlit ceiling panels inside. Branch-legged stools on brown carpet reinforce the found-object language. Trying on clothes here feels less like a test and more like a pause, and that is a precise piece of retail psychology.

A Garden at the Top of the Climb

The payoff of the vertical route is a veranda garden on the fitting room level, shown on the second floor plan. A glass wall of dense foliage faces a long curved plaster bench beneath a skylight, and leaf shadows fall across hanging rails of swimwear and towels. The garden justifies the climb. It turns the upper floor into the best room in the store rather than the one farthest away.

Plans and Drawings

The plans make the logic clear. The ground floor holds display tables, the cashier and a fitting room by the entrance. The first floor centers on a display table, with clothing racks and the client bathroom. The second floor lines up the fitting rooms against the planted veranda. A top level handles stock shelving, a staff bathroom, a pantry and a machine room beside an open terrace. The spiral and linear stairs appear on each sheet as the two fixed points around which everything else shifts.

Section AA and the front elevation both include a line-drawn tree beside the facade. It is a small graphic choice, but it confirms that the tree was treated as part of the design from the start, not as something incidental on the sidewalk.

Why This Project Matters

Small-footprint retail in dense neighborhoods increasingly means stacking, and most stacked shops lose customers floor by floor. Panō Garcia shows a way to reverse that. Make the stair the main event, give each level its own light and character, and put the most rewarding space at the top. The building pulls you upward instead of relying on signage to push you there.

It is also a lesson in restraint. With a limited palette of plaster, timber, stone and planting, AIA Estúdio builds a brand interior that rarely spells out the brand's name. For designers working on tight urban plots, the takeaway is clear: circulation designed as an experience can do the work that square meters cannot.

Panō Garcia Store by AIA Estúdio (lead architect Alice Tepedino; team Julia Martinelli, Arthur Cordeiro, Renan Vargas, Miguel Ajuz), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Area: 260 m². Completed: 2026. Photography: Maíra Acayaba.

About the Studio

Share Your Own Work on uni.xyz

If projects like this are the kind of work you want to make, uni.xyz is a place to publish your own, find collaborators, and enter design competitions.