Cellars, tasting locations and museums dedicated to wine, represent new opportunities for the best architects. The producers, in every part of the world, turn to them and, not infrequently, the images of their works have become the images of wine itself, transforming these same objects from secluded places into architectural objects in the landscape. But how do you harmonize these transformations, imposed by the dynamics of the market and the entrepreneurial creativity, with the fact that wine should continue to be produced and grown old without forgetting the tradition advises and teaches? This book answers this question and repeats this question again, because those who wrote it believes that between architecture and wine there is a hidden but strong analogy: every work of architecture, like wine, should be made to grow harmoniously. Not always, though, so it happens, but sometimes, as this book is about, so it happens.
This volume documents with images and drawings a selected series of wine architectures, wineries and wine museums made, among others, by Herzog & de Meuron, Mario Botta, Santiago Calatrava, Frank O. Gehry, Steven Holl, Renzo Piano, Gilles Perrodin, Boris Pedrecca, ARCHICURA.
(“ARCHITETTRA E VINO. Nuove cantine e gusto del vino”, author: Francesca Chiorino, Electa editore, Milano, 2007)
“The Mussotto district is in excitement for the not-to-be-missed appointment on Sunday 4th March. It will be the day that the «first stone» of the new church will be blessed, or rather, the memorial of the beginning of construcion.(…) The day will start at 10.30 in the current church, dedicated to the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, with a Mass presided by Bishop Sebastiano Dho, during which the first stone will be blessed. At 11.30, the community will offer refreshments wishes”.
(extract from the journal “gazzetta d’Alba”, 27/02/2007, 9.)
In the forthcoming days, the Cascina Adelaide of Amabile Drocco, will definitely stand in “surface” with the final conclusion of the architectural design, building site and, finally, we will drink a toast to his inauguration.
The project carried out in detail by ARCHICURA is primarily an invitation to the future supported by a strong-suggestion-architecture, forged in the earth as a work of art, and gently leaned in close contact with the hills covered with vineyards. The project is articulated and complex, however, reveals that the object-cellar is not only architecture, but it is a dialogue with tradition, with landscape, with art, with future but especially with the hard and hidden work which transforms the grapes into sublime wine.
