Foster + Partners designs Portia Winery as a church of wine

02/11/2020
Category: Travel

In the 2000s, Marques de Riscal started a new trend hiring world-renowned architects to design statement wineries. Portia Winery followed suit by hiring Norman Foster for their Ribera del Duero headquarters, a Spanish region home to many wineries.

This was the first winery to be designed by Foster + Partners, so they really looked at this building type with a fresh and innovative concept. The trefoil design takes advantage of the natural topology of the landscape to aid in the vinification process. Trucks drive on a ramp on one of the wings and drive off on a second ramp on the second wing. They drop the grapes straight into the sorting facility at the center of the building, taking benefit of gravity and avoiding mechanical conveyor belts.

At the interior, each wing represents a different function and step in the winemaking process: fermentation in steel vats, aging in oak barrels, and aging in bottles. The two aging processes occur in the wings partly embedded in the natural landscape. Material choices are concrete, wood, steel, and glass, representing all materials linked to the winemaking process: the terroir or soil, the barrels, the fermentation vats, and the bottles. The level of detail in the design is impressive as even the steel fermentation vats have been designed from the ground up by the Foster + Partners team. Throughout the three wings, red-stained windows have been added as a reference to medieval churches, reinforcing this winery’s stature to be a church of wine.

Schedule an introduction with us

Custom patterns

Read our magazine

Talk Carpet Magazine Issue 15: Peru

It is no secret that Paris has been the capital of fashion since the seventeenth century. The city has been the playground for prestigious designers and couture brands like Chanel, Dior, and Saint Laurent. Today the Parisian style is not only an aesthetic choice but a philosophy. It embraces elegance, timelessness, and slow responsible fashion. The focus is on the cut and the quality of the materials. No fluff or excessiveness with a less is more approach. And what better way to understand Parisian fashion than to visit a museum dedicated to it.

For more than 70 years, the house has been crafting magical couture pieces in their atelier at 30 Avenue Montaigne in Paris. Christian Dior has made this location a legendary address since the first collection in 1947. Behind its new flagship, the House of Dior inaugurates a permanent exhibition in an extraordinary gallery, independently of its boutique. Mr. Dior wanted to be an architect; the building and the museum pay him a beautiful tribute today.

The staging is astonishing. A circular staircase at the entrance showcases 452 dresses and 1,422 accessories, all 3D printed. Bags, shoes, perfumes, and small objects: so many testimonies of the Dior style materialized to elaborate this Diorama.