The project is the outcome of an invitation in 2005 of a family-based wine-making and agro-business company to master plan an innovative resort concept that would combine the rural experience of wine and olive oil production, with the amenities of leisure destination. With 66 hectares, the site is in the vicinity of the whitewashed town of Montemor-o-novo, in the Alentejo, near the UNESCO-listed city of Évora. Located on a gentle valley facing South and overlooking the skyline of the town’s medieval castle, the master plan was devised in a system of clustered villas and terraced row-houses reminiscent of the former agricultural compounds of the Alentejo, known as “monte”, which literally means “mount” or “hill” in English; an etymological reference to its topographic condition. In addition, a small lake cools the air and is used for leisure activities besides serving as a sustainable water-retaining basin for agriculture.
Seattle-based goCstudio, an architecture studio known for its innovative work and collaborations with artists and craftsmen, has completed COR Cellars winery located in the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. The 5,200-square-foot space surrounds a protected exterior courtyard that becomes the heart of the project and welcomes visitors into the new tasting room.
Located in Ovacik, an area in Izmir, Turkey, covering 2580 sqm harvested land especially for vineyards, oriented towards North-West, South-East axis, the Ovacik winery is designed as a wine manufacturing – aiming to produce 10.000 wine bottles per year- and accommodation center. The North-East facade is facing the vineyards while the South-West facade is facing the Aegean Sea view.
Most who have visited a distillery know that entering an active barrel house is a profound olfactory experience. Over a period of five or more years, as a barrel of whiskey matures, a portion of its contents is lost to evaporation. This inevitable process, multiplied by thousands of barrels, creates the “angel’s share”, a scent that blankets the building in a delightfully unmistakable aroma. The angel’s share is one of the first characteristics that welcomes visitors to Barrel House 1-14 at the Jack Daniel Distillery.
The DI SIPIO winery in Ripa Teatina, Abruzzo, Italy, near the Adriatic sea. is inserted in a large wine estate and it’s integrated with the pre-existing Seventeenth Century’s villa and the natural landscape.
The project is an extension of a 17th century farmhouse and wine cellar in the countryside of La Mancha, which creates a centre devoted to wine culture. A new star–shaped piece is placed in the ancient courtyard, connecting old buildings and new ones. Its large scale is fragmented into smaller open spaces, each of them linked to the new functions around it. The courtyard, centre of the activity of the old farmhouse, is transformed by this star–shaped construction but maintains its character as an exterior space. The peaks of the star open towards the landscape giving entrance to the new complex. In this way the complex acquires a new relationship with the surroundings.
Situated on a bank of the Chao Phraya River in Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya Province, The Wine Ayutthaya is a new leisure place for wine drinkers. The building was constructed to become a new tourist attraction in hopes of stimulating the economy of local communities surrounding this world heritage site, which was the capital city of Thailand 400 years ago. The building is a product of architectural creativity and environmental context molded into a magnet for tourists.
The design of the cellars reflects the three necessary steps for wine production. The first pavilion is a wooden gable roofed structure which shelters grapes as they are fermented in huge steel shells. A second buried space hosts the barrels in a grid of 3×3 concrete vaults of a great tectonic nature. In this spectacular place time detains both for the purpose of wine maturation as well as for a spectator who finds himself in these surroundings. Given that the space is buried, a constant temperature is achieved without need for inputs of heat or cold. Finally, the third pavilion is identical to the first one, it is the home to the last process of the wine production. Here, the bottling and storing of the wine takes place before bringing it to the surface again for its eventual distribution.
In 2009, IB Studio began to develop for a private client a project of a new building in one of the most dramatic Italian landscapes. After more than six years, IB studio finally obtained all the permits to build it.
In the interim, IB Studio had to continuously adapt its concept to a complex and demanding set of bureaucratic rules, often at odds with aesthetic and functional principles.
The site is surrounded by the unique hills of Chianti, covered with vineyards, half-way between Florence and Siena. A cultured and illuminated customer has made it possible to pursue, through architecture, the enhancement of the landscape and the surroundings as expression of the cultural and social valence of the place where wine is produced. The functional aspects have therefore become an essential part of a design itinerary which centres on the geomorphological experimentation of a building understood as the most authentic expression of a desired symbiosis and merger between anthropic culture, the work of man, his work environment and the natural environment. The physical and intellectual construction of the winery pivots on the profound and deep-rooted ties with the land, a relationship which is so intense and suffered (also in terms of economic investment) as to make the architectural image conceal itself and blend into it. The purpose of the project has therefore been to merge the building and the rural landscape; the industrial complex appears to be a part of the latter thanks to the roof, which has been turned into a plot of farmland cultivated with vines, interrupted, along the contour lines, by two horizontal cuts which let light into the interior and provide those inside the building with a view of the landscape through the imaginary construction of a diorama. The façade, to use an expression typical of buildings, therefore extends horizontally along the natural slope, paced by the rows of vines which, along with the earth, form its “roof cover”. The openings or cuts discreetly reveal the underground interior: the office areas, organized like a belvedere above the barricade, and the areas where the wine is produced are arranged along the lower, and the bottling and storage areas along the upper.
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