Commissioning a monumental winery
A monumental winery does not begin with the request for an iconic building.
It begins when there are:
a place capable of generating form;
a real production process;
matter capable of becoming construction;
a patron prepared to think beyond image.
Only then can production and architecture cease to be two separate systems.
The winery can become an Inhabitable Work of production:
a place in which earth, gravity, matter and time assume form.
Monumental Wineries: Gravity, Earth and the Architecture of Production
A winery is not an envelope in which machines, tanks and barrels are placed.
It is a productive organism.
It transforms matter.
It uses gravity.
It controls temperature, light, humidity and time.
It enters physically into the earth.
For Fausto Ferrara, architect, artist and author, it is precisely this condition that makes the winery one of the territories in which architecture can once again coincide with necessity.
Monumentality does not derive from size.
It does not derive from image.
It emerges when production process, structure, topography, matter and form become inseparable.
The winery can then cease to be an industrial building given an architectural appearance.
It can become a Work.
The time of production and the time of architecture
Wine does not belong to immediacy.
It requires transformation.
Waiting.
Ageing.
Preservation.
Architecture capable of enduring also arises against the speed of the image.
The winery can therefore become one of the places in which production and architecture share the same principle:
time is not an obstacle to be eliminated.
It is a component of the Work.
Matter ages.
Light changes.
Landscape transforms.
Wine passes through invisible processes.
Architecture must be capable of receiving this duration.
Gravity can become form
Wine production has an original relationship with gravity.
To descend.
To transfer.
To settle.
To accumulate.
To preserve.
Where the conditions of the site allow it, differences in level can reduce mechanical movement while becoming a spatial principle.
The project no longer overlays an image onto the production cycle.
It transforms the cycle itself into architectural section.
Ramps.
Changes of level.
Terraces.
Courtyards.
Hypogeal spaces.
Technical routes.
Gravity ceases to be merely a physical force.
It becomes an order of construction.
Monumental does not mean spectacular
A monumental winery is not necessarily large.
Above all, it does not need to be spectacular.
True monumentality belongs to permanence.
To a mass that appears necessary.
To a structure capable of passing through time.
To matter that does not depend upon fashion.
A wall can be monumental.
A courtyard can be monumental.
A hypogeal sequence can be monumental.
A great ageing hall can acquire monumentality through proportion, gravity and light without becoming scenography.
Monumentality is not added.
It emerges from the necessity of construction.
Building within the earth
The winery naturally belongs to the earth.
Not through nostalgia for the cave.
For physical reasons.
Mass.
Thermal inertia.
Protection.
Darkness.
Humidity.
Stability.
The relationship with the ground can therefore become one of the principal instruments of the project.
For Ferrara, hypogeal architecture does not mean hiding a building.
It means using topography as part of the construction itself.
To excavate can be more radical than to add.
The earth does not become scenery.
It becomes matter of architecture.
Matter: what works, not what clads
In a winery, matter must withstand precise conditions.
Weight.
Wear.
Water.
Thermal variation.
Cleaning.
Contact.
Time.
For this reason, the Truth of Matter acquires a particularly concrete meaning.
Concrete.
Stone.
Metal.
Wood.
Earth.
They are not selected to compose a rustic or industrial image.
They must participate in the actual structure of the Work.
Matter does not describe authenticity.
It must possess it.
Light and darkness belong to the same organism
A winery does not require the same light everywhere.
Some places must be protected.
Others can open.
Production areas.
Ageing spaces.
Barrel rooms.
Working areas.
Courtyards.
Tasting rooms.
The relationship with the landscape.
Each condition establishes a different relationship with light.
Darkness is not an absence.
It can be a necessity.
Light, in the same way, must not become an effect.
It can orient a path.
Reveal a mass.
Measure the depth of space.
Separate the productive world from the exterior without breaking their continuity.
Productive landscape, not decorative landscape
The vineyard is not the winery’s panorama.
It is part of its productive system.
Rows.
Slopes.
Soil.
Water.
Agricultural roads.
Exposure.
Ventilation.
Harvesting.
Vehicle movements.
The winery belongs to this territorial structure before it belongs to its own image.
For this reason, the project must understand landscape as a productive place, not as an image to be framed through a glass wall.
The relationship between building and vineyard can then become structural.
Not representational.
The E9 Grid: production against scenography
The E9 Grid allows one essential question to be asked:
when does a winery exceed its condition as a productive building and become architecture?
It is not enough for it to function.
It is not enough for it to be expensive.
It is not enough for it to be published.
It is not enough for it to generate a recognisable image.
The relationship between Work and Built Object, Place and Surface, Necessary Form and Image must be tested.
A winery may be formally striking and remain industrial scenography.
Or it may emerge directly from productive and territorial conditions until form and necessity can no longer be separated.
That is where the Work begins.
The winery as a unified organism
A winery contains different systems.
Production.
Logistics.
Technology.
Administration.
Hospitality.
Tasting.
Storage.
Landscape.
The problem is not to place them beside one another.
The problem is to construct an organism in which each part belongs to a common structure.
The project must be able to move across different scales:
from the detail of a threshold to vehicle circulation;
from the temperature of a room to the general topography;
from the relationship with a barrel to the presence of the building within the territory.
Complexity is not concealed.
It is ordered.
A winery is not a shed transformed into an image
Many contemporary wineries begin with an initial separation.
On one side, the production process.
On the other, architecture called upon afterwards to represent it.
The building functions.
Then it is clad.
Designed.
Made recognisable.
But architecture should not arrive after production.
It should emerge from its structure.
The movement of grapes.
The flow of must.
Levels.
Tanks.
Vinification.
Ageing.
Bottling.
Storage.
Handling.
Temperature.
Humidity.
Technical access.
These are not constraints to be concealed.
They are generative material for the project.
An author for a productive commission
Commissioning a winery from Fausto Ferrara does not mean purchasing an architectural image to associate with a brand.
It means accepting that the project begins with the real conditions of production and place.
The production programme must be precise.
Quantities must be known.
Flows must be verified.
Technical conditions must become part of the architecture.
Only then can Necessary Form emerge.
The patron does not ask the author to decorate production.
The patron allows its structure to become Work.
Production and representation must not be separated
The contemporary winery often possesses two identities.
A productive one.
A public one.
On one side, work.
On the other, tasting, hospitality and the representation of the brand.
When these two conditions are designed separately, architecture risks becoming communication applied to production.
Ferrara works in the opposite direction.
The visitor can understand the process without turning work into spectacle.
The production sequence can become spatial experience without ceasing to be real.
Architecture does not stage wine.
It makes visible the structure that produces it.
