Livraria Cultura’s São Paulo showpiece offers shoppers an inviting, bright, wooden space in which to peruse potential purchases.

Livraria Cultura’s ‘White Shop’ bookshop in São Paulo is a welcoming space offering ample seating in the middle of the shopfloor. Unlike the vast majority of its rivals there are almost no books in the mid-shop, the bulk of the offer is around the perimeter.

Practically, this means a massive mid-shop space with dark wood steps up to the books and a lot of red and white designer-style chairs in the space beneath them.

Overhead, the store’s linear feel is emphasised by a wooden slatted ceiling where the white lighting takes the form of another slat-line.

This is a very simple, but almost entirely welcoming, minimalist interior where shoppers are invited to spend time reading the books they might want to purchase while sitting either in one of the chairs or on the steps, much like a grand museum or perhaps London’s Festival Hall.

Livraria Cultura operates a handful of other stores in Brazil’s commercial capital, but this is the showpiece, if only for the counter-intuitive nature of its interior layout.