Bodegas Protos

Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners applies lessons of the past to bring a traditional winery into the 21st century.

By David Cohn
This is an excerpt of an article from the March 2009 edition of Architectural Record.

Traditional wineries in Peñafiel, in the heart of Spain’s Ribera del Duero, sound like something out of a fairy tale, at least in the telling: Under the medieval castle that presides over the town from a steep hillock, vintners have carved a labyrinth of tunnels, seeking the optimum temperature and humidity for aging wine. With their new facility for the Bodegas Protos, London-based architect Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (formerly Richard Rogers Partnership) has drawn one of the region’s oldest producers out of its caves and into the 21st century, but not without taking note of what the subterranean galleries have to offer.

Program

Founded in 1927, Protos has grown steadily over the years, accumulating 1.2 miles of underground galleries. But the need for modern production facilities and storage areas made the switch to a freestanding building the only practical option for its latest addition. With the growth of wine tourism, the building also had to play a marketing role, attracting visitors and accommodating tours, a function poorly served by the winery’s tiny shop and maze of dark tunnels.

For the 215,000-square-foot expansion, Protos acquired an undeveloped block across the street from its existing facilities, permitting an underground connection between them. The new building has 42 temperature-controlled, stainless-steel tanks that can process 264,200 gallons of wine. Its lower level aging area has a capacity of 5,000 barrels and 3.5 million bottles.

Solution

Rogers Stirk Harbour’s design draws on the firm’s scheme for the enlargement of Madrid’s Barajas Airport [Architectural Record, October 2005, page 150]. But at Protos, the architects translated the airport’s undulating roofs into the more traditional form of five parallel barrel vaults and used warmer materials, such as wood structural elements and terra-cotta roof tiles. They incorporated principles of sustainable design, not only to conserve resources, but also to meet the winery’s strict climate-control requirements.

The building is set into the sloping site, taking advantage of the surrounding earth’s thermal inertia. The vaults cover a semiburied upper level containing areas for production, shipping, and bottling, separated by glazed walls. Echoing the forms of wine barrels and tunnels, the vaults allow the introduction of daylight into these areas, while long overhangs protect them from solar gain. As in Barajas, heat accumulates in the vaults’ upper sections, and the spaces are cooled in the summer by the night air.

For the underground level dedicated to wine aging, the mass of the concrete structure, necessary for supporting the fermentation tanks above, also helps stabilize temperatures. Grilles in the local limestone walls surrounding the building function like the ventilation chimneys used in traditional caves to control temperature and humidity.

Offices and visitors’ spaces are located in a series of intermediate levels on the building’s western flank, where a lozenge-shaped courtyard brings daylight to lower levels. Visitors enter at the top of the site under the first bay of the vaults. Here, a large mezzanine, soon to be equipped with sales and receiving areas, offers views over the upper floor. A spiral stair and cylindrical elevator connect this mezzanine to the main level, where offices are located, and to another mezzanine below, which contains spaces for receptions and wine-tasting. A library and museum will be installed on the lowest level under the light court.

The structural elements were prefabricated and then assembled on-site like a kit of parts, says Jan Guell, project architect. These include the glue-laminated Douglas fir arches that support the roof and the lower level’s precast-concrete components. For the arches, instead of circular forms the architects chose parabolic shapes because of their structural efficiency — their lower horizontal thrust made smaller cross sections possible. Short metal struts lift the vaults off the arches, a strategy that Guell defends as “a way to celebrate the structure.” They also make the vaults appear to float, he adds.

Commentary

When one thinks of the work of Richard Rogers and his associates, articulated structures in steel and glass usually come to mind. At Protos, the use of warmer and more traditional materials domesticates the futuristic imagery of the earlier work, although in this context, the separation of the vaults from their supporting arches seems a rather awkward insistence on the kit-of-parts concept. But as a whole, the building is a welcome addition to the surrounding landscape, standing out amid the town’s dilapidated center and graceless new neighborhoods, which look back to the days when the agribusiness of wine making was accommodated in less generous and less thoughtfully conceived quarters.

Formal name of project: Bodegas Protos

Location: Peñafiel, Spain

Completion Date: October 2008

Gross square footage: 215,000 sq.ft.

Site size: 53 acres

Total construction cost: $31 million

Owner: Bodegas Protos

Architect:
Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners

 

David Cohn is Architectural Record ’s Madrid-based correspondent.

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