Carme Pinós' new winery: a sustainable monastery dedicated to wine
The building, in La Horra, is characterized by having a buried part and another in dialogue with the landscape.
La Horra (Burgos)Architect Carme Pinós (Barcelona, 1954) often speaks of the weight that "responsibility" has on her vision of the craft. Buildings must fulfill the function for which they are designed and, at the same time, must poetically transcend it. They must also create the city, and when they are in rural and natural settings, they must create the landscape. All of this is abundantly present in the building she unveiled this Friday, a new winery for La Horra, in Burgos. The entire production area is buried underground, also for reasons of energy efficiency; and the grape harvest and social areas stand out and are immersed in the landscape.
"I'm not fussy, but I knew that the landscape, the land, and the vineyards should take center stage, and I didn't want to get into the game of who can make it bigger," says Carme Pinós, distancing herself from iconic buildings in the world of wine as an architect. Calatraba. "The landscape is the result of how you see nature, how you intellectualize it," he explains.
Another essential feature of the winery, which covers an area of 4,700 m2, is the flight it reaches, as if it were a concentrate of Pinoso's landmarks. Throughout the tour, one thinks of important works from her career, including the Igualada cemetery and the Olympic archery buildings, both designed with Enric Miralles, and later ones such as the expansion of the Son Brull Hotel in Mallorca and some pavilions on a Mexican estate. "The winery process wasn't difficult, but it was long, going back and forth, because the technicians had to discover what the winery they wanted to make was like, and we discovered it through many conversations," explains the architect, who collaborated on this project with the engineering firm Vértice 21 and the construction firm Inexo.
The new winery, which cost €9.5 million, represents the consolidation of Bodegas La Horra, whose operations date back to 2009. The work was carried out in phases. First, the winery was built to vinify the first vintages of Corimbo and Corimbo I, from the Ribera de Duero DO. Then, in 2015, the aging and storage area for the bottles was built. And the third phase, which included Pinós, began two years ago. From now on, the previous warehouses will operate as logistics centers. "Carme is the magician, the artist, who has made our dream a reality," says Mario Rotllant, president of Grupo Roda, who emphasizes that their projects are "self-limited growth" to maintain the excellence they strive for. However, he wants the new winery to contribute to promoting wine tourism in the area. As Roda Group CEO Agustín Santolaya says, the winery must be "a perfect machine for making high-quality wines," and it also has a "monastery-like" feel. The facilities also include measures to make them more sustainable, such as geothermal energy and the ventilation system known as Canadian tubes.
The tour begins next to a century-old holm oak and a small adobe house where you can make ribs. Descending, you can see the fields where more vineyards will be planted, almost touching the winery. The façade has a sinuous shape to blend into the landscape and is made of brick, to give it warmth. Ceramics are one of the noble materials, along with stone and wood, which Pinós says "age rather than deteriorate."
One of the most powerful parts of the winery is the entrance of trucks loaded with boxes of grapes. It has an astonishing gravitas. Shortly after, we encounter the building's most iconic element, a cantilever shaped like an inverted tile, part of which is embedded in the ground. Pinós has also managed to give an artistic character to the rigor of the grape harvesting and bottle storage rooms by adorning the walls with the marks of the reed formwork and with strategic and expressive skylights and characteristic vents inspired by those of old local wineries.
A moment of great activity
Carme Pinós has opened the winery at a time of great activity: she is working on the future expansion of the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, the transformation of the Zona Franca complex in Vigo and the rehabilitation of the manor house Lourizán, the latter with Carlos Enrich. The installation of a hospice Pediatric Oncology for the Enriqueta Villavecchia Children's Oncology Foundation in the Victoria Pavilion of the Sant Pau complex in Barcelona.
On the other hand, Pinós has just opened a cultural space in Palma called K3, started with its manager, Flora Muñoz, and the architect and former collaborator Sé Duch. One of the first activities was a debate on Pere Joan's comic Neochaos (Autosider Comics).