Since starting her career in 2008, Andressa has had the opportunity to design and manage a variety of luxury retail projects, including dozens of Tiffany & Co. stores worldwide, Dolce & Gabbana St. Barts, Barneys New York Fine Jewelry and the David Yurman Townhouse, which was honored with a GE Edison Award of Excellence in 2010.

In addition, she has been involved in a variety of exciting hospitality and high-end residential projects, such as the Reserve at the Morgans Hotel, which received the 2015 IES Award of Merit, One Hudson Yards Condominium, One Madison Park Condominium, and Opus model apartment at Frank Gerry’s first building in Hong Kong.

In all of these projects, from the largest to the smallest, she is driven by the same curiosity that got her into the field in the first place. When studying interior design at UFU, Brazil, where she received her bachelor’s degree in 2006, she was constantly intrigued by the lighting effects in the great spaces they researched. That drove her to study Lighting and, in 2008, she earned her M.A. in Architectural Lighting Design at the Hochschule Wismar, Germany.

Right out of school she moved to New York for an internship with Cooley Monato Studio, where she has since held various design positions and was recently promoted to Senior Associate.

The same lighting principles that triggered her curiosity and led her to the profession early on are the principles that she tries to incorporate on the projects she works on today; where lighting is fully integrated with the architecture and the effect contributes to the overall experience of the space without taking center stage.