ANA
BORTOLOTTO
Architect · Brand environments
About
Creating environments for brands
Architect, seventeen years creating brand environments for retail, workplace and cultural clients.
I design concepts that materialize how a brand is experienced in space, and the elements that turn it into real things: materials, textures, fixtures, displays and environmental graphics.
The work becomes better when it's made collectively, shoulder to shoulder with the client's own team, and then carefully developed and taken through prototyping into production.
I lead multidisciplinary teams and act as the key point of client contact, translating strategy into store concepts that scale across locations without losing brand integrity.
I've launched new store formats for some of Brazil's largest retail groups, my work has been twice named Store of the Year by the Retail Design Institute, and recognized with an iF Design Award and a Frame Award.
Lojas Renner · Concept design, fixtures, environmental graphics · 2022
Renner Re+
Project developed at R4Design as part of the studio's team,
credit is shared with the studio's teams and collaborators.
A circular-economy store format for Brazil's largest fashion retailer, organized around a single boulevard running from façade to fitting rooms. Social fitting rooms, self-checkout cores and distributed mobile payment replace the register line.
The pilots cut construction waste by 34%, water use by 58% and display materiality by 27%. Renner adopted the format as its standard for new stores from 2022.
Store of the Year 2022, Retail Design Institute. LEED ID+C Retail v4 and BREEAM certified.
Camicado · Store concept, fixtures, environmental graphics · Iguatemi flagship · 2022
Camicado
A store concept for the housewares chain, built around a main promenade that organizes the offer by occasion of use rather than by product category, with a central relationship plaza at its heart and an open façade that reads into the mall instead of closing against it.
Adopted as the chain's standard model from 2022 and replicated across the network, with measurable gains in visitor numbers, conversion, customer return and items per transaction.
Project developed at R4Design as part of the studio's team,
credit is shared with the studio's teams and collaborators.
XP Investimentos · Global store concept, fixtures, environmental graphics · São Paulo
XP Faria Lima Flagship
The flagship carries the concept at full scale: Latin America's first suspended curved-glass studio, working as a content hub, an open-air arena, and a façade combining the country's highest-resolution LED glass installation with kinetic sculpture.
Store of the Year 2024, Retail Design Institute, and first place in the Financial Services category.
Project developed at R4Design as part of the studio's team,
credit is shared with the studio's teams and collaborators.
XP Investimentos · Global store concept, fixtures, environmental graphics · Various cities
XP Investimentos
Translating a digital-native financial brand into physical space, with knowledge and relationship as the organizing idea rather than transaction. Each store opens onto a plaza that works as reception, event space and auditorium at once — a room the city can be invited into, which is what a firm built on democratizing investment has to be able to offer.
Brand presence is built through contrast of light and shadow, following a lighthouse metaphor: black surfaces against illuminated elements. Behind the plaza, private advisory rooms carry their own acoustic and ergonomic specification, and restricted areas follow strict protocols for handling sensitive information.
One concept, five cities — adapted to each site without loosening.
Project developed at R4Design as part of the studio's team,
credit is shared with the studio's teams and collaborators.
CCG Saúde · Interior concept, wayfinding and environmental graphics · 2021
Hospital Humaniza
Humanized-care concept for a new flagship hospital, developed alongside the hospital's technical architecture team and delivered in twelve months, through the pandemic — 200 clinical beds, 20 individual ICU beds, ten operating rooms and a 24-hour emergency unit.
Hospitality materials and a custom palette applied at varying saturation give each floor its own register. The 2,500-piece signage program was coordinated in SignAgent on automated templates I built for the project, so design intent and production logic lived in a single system.
Project developed at R4Design as part of the studio's team,
credit is shared with the studio's teams and collaborators.
Guararapes · Concept, design and execution management · São Paulo · 2021
Casa Guararapes
A 1920s mansion on Avenida Brasil converted into a showroom for a wood-panel manufacturer — product display, coworking, auditorium, meeting rooms and a materials library.
A contemporary scenographic layer set against the building's original architecture, built so the two read as one.
iF Design Award 2023.
Project developed at R4Design as part of the studio's team,
credit is shared with the studio's teams and collaborators.
Coworking and marketplace · Interior concept, environmental graphics · 2018
UFO
A coworking floor for a young audience inside a shopping center, doubling as a marketplace for regional brands. The concept takes zero gravity literally: stones levitate, surfaces read as orbits, and the room behaves less like an office than like something that came loose from the ground.
The environmental graphics carry passages from Stephen Hawking's The Universe in a Nutshell, set in Morse code — read as pattern first, and as text only by whoever decides to decode it.
Delivered on a minimal budget and a compressed schedule, which set the rules rather than limiting them: few materials, exact detailing, and every effect earned in construction instead of in finish.
Coworking of the Year,
Frame Award 2018.
SELECTED CLIENTS
Lojas Renner
Camicado
CCG Saúde
Soprano
XP Investimentos
Guararapes
Cia. Zaffari
Cavaletti
Vivapark
Portobello Shop
Kopenhagen
Bacio di Latte
RECOGNITION
XP Faria Lima
Renner Re+
Casa Guararapes
UFO
Coworking of the year
Frame Award
2018
iF Design Award
2023
Store of the Year
Retail Design Institute
2022
Store of the Year, and first place in Financial Services
Retail Design Institute
2024