A winery on California’s central coast
Creators: name: Furbacher, Richard John
Publisher: name: University of British Columbia
Year: 2009

description: The design process is both highly personal and in many respects subconscious in nature. It follows that form-making is a difficult and elusive subject to explicate. This project hypothesized a mechanism for beginning to understand the design process and then attempted to illustrate the proposed mechanism by undertaking a design project which tested its presumptions. The hypothesis took the form of a directed study in which the architectural detail was proposed to be the instrument which might facilitate the translation of ideas into material, space and connections, i.e., the parts which would eventually become the whole. The notions and implications described in this study were then explored and tested by means of their pragmatic application to a design project, that is, the design of a winery for a site in Paso Robles, San Luis Obispo County, California. It was anticipated that the architecture itself would either prove the worth of the argument or expose its flaws. The project addressed notions of a winery at multiple scales by developing an understanding of grape growing, of the landscape of viticulture, of the process of winemaking and of the culture of wine. The characteristics of these themes became the starting point and continual frame of reference within which design ideas were evaluated as the project progressed. Whereas it was expected that both architectural details and details of wine, wine culture and winemaking would inform the design as it evolved, this did not occur in a particularly balanced fashion. Instead, the form of the building developed not only from details of grape growing and winemaking but also details which made those processes visible to visitors of the winery. Architectural details per se were much less generative of the form than the directed study seemed to anticipate. Instead, architectural details were principally generated in the resolution and service of experiential aspects of the winery's design. The parti of the building is a rectangular box surrounded by "clipped" on programmatic elements. The central rectangular volume accommodates the sectional production of wine employing gravity alone as the force which moves the wine between stations. The interior can be understood as a whole from which three-dimensional cuts have removed anything not essential. The resulting interior landscape is a series of interconnected planes, each of which functions as a datum that acts in relation to both interior and exterior elements. Within the interior landscape, both wine and visitors move along linked, downward leading paths which culminate in the barrel room imbedded deep in the earth. Multiple opportunities for both public and private wine tasting are afforded along the visitors' path. Important spaces not part of the winery's central volume include the primary tasting room, the manager's office, a kitchen and light wells. The latter bring differing quantities of light into the barrel room depending on the adjacent grade. Numerous details of both interior and exterior spaces of the building are intended to be read as reflecting various aspects of the processes taking place both on the land surrounding the building and within the space of the winery itself. From the exterior, controlled views of the interior have been designed to suggest the nature of the processes taking place within while limiting the amount of light which is permitted to enter. Mumerous details of both interior and exterior spaces of the building are intended to be read as reflecting various aspects of the processes taking place both on the land surrounding the building and within the space of the winery itself.