The organized mess of Vintset Experimental Store gets anyone to feel comfortable to freely interact with the store. Its owners commissioned the project to give the city a place for cultural exchanges and diverse experiences. Therefore, the project was designed to give protagonism to its users and not to the architecture itself.

Located in Vitória – Brazil, the name of the store was one of the main contact points of the propositions for its architecture. Vintset, not only refers to the local area code (27), but it also is a result from the connection of two other words: ‘vintage’ and ‘set’. In order to exist, an experience needs to be located in time and space. ‘Vintage’ and ‘Set’ allude both these characteristics, respectively.

Whereas ‘Vintage’ refers to temporality and timeline, ‘Set’ takes you to the movie sets background, where stories can happen. Space and Time! For that reason the whole store was thought to be a set backstage where the objects for sale are part of what is not in the camera’s field of vision. Precisely as said above, all the protagonism is left for people as an necessary addition to the environment designing!

Vintset was born with the intention of being a place capable of bringing together designers, stylists and new producers who would like to expose their products. Hence the ‘experimental store’ concept provides the opportunity for a new supplier to experience the market before venturing into opening a store of his own.

This makes Vintset a collaborative store that can sell various types of products: clothes, toothbrushes, shaving creams, shoes, old cameras, beers, tobacco, etc. Moreover, it organizes weekly events of different natures such as flash tattoo days, foodtrucks guests and presentations of local singers and Dj’s.

As for materiality, there are no thin-finish coatings in the store. This is because there is no intention of customers getting hesitating when using the space. In addition, all the wood was reused from the old store and the locksmith was designed to give the feeling of fallen wires of a film set.

The diagonally cut block wall has only one side finished, and it again alludes to a movie set, as if the scene only needed to be mounted within the camera’s capture angle.

Design: Clara Nahas, Nathan Guimarães, Juliano Ferreira and Rovena Daher / ANGATU
Photography: Camila Santos