Mission Hill Family Estate
Westbank, British Columbia
Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects

Architects create a hilltop village for a winery that is both tourist destination and manufacturing facility

By Sheri Olson, AIA

© Paul Warchol

For more photos click on 'photos & drawings' above. To see the people and products behind this project click on 'people & products.'

For a hilltop site overlooking 92-mile-long Lake Okanagan, the Mission Hill Estate Winery asked Tom Kundig, AIA, of Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen, to create an architectural destination. By raising the standard for all Okanagan wineries, von Mandl saw the potential for wine tourism like Napa Valley’s.

A winery is a strange mix of hospitality facility and petrochemical plant. On the public side are wine-tasting rooms, gift shops, and food concessions; on the business end are high-tech presses, huge stainless-steel vats, and bottling lines. The wine maker is leery of people bringing heat and light into the controlled environment of the cellar.

In 1981, von Mandl bought a distressed winery/brewery on Mission Hill and began a $21 million transformation. The old 35,000–square-foot building, now disguised by earth berms, ivy, and trees, recedes into the background, allowing the dramatic new public elements to step into the spotlight.

Visitors wind their way up the hill to a battered wall that recalls the fortified towns that stud the Rhine’s wine country. This is the first threshold in a series of outdoor rooms that shift from the scale of the Coast Mountains to the cultivated garden. Visitors walk through a demonstration vineyard (the winery’s 850 acres of vineyards, the second largest in Canada, lie 90 minutes south) before turning through oversize concrete arches into a central courtyard. The camouflaged warehouse forms the north wall, while loggias on the south and east break prevailing winds and provide a refuge from the intense summer sun. A grassy amphitheater opens the southeast corner to a view of the Monashee Mountains and a lake 600 feet below.

On axis with the main entry, a 10-story bell tower provides the focal point of the winery—connecting the underground cellars, the courtyard, and a panoramic view of the valley. The tower offers an instant historic reference, though updated by Kundig in interlocking precast-concrete panels. To unify the disparate pieces of the 40,000-square-foot project and save money, he developed a concrete kit of parts (arches, columns, and capitals). Reached by a stair that wraps around the base of the tower and entered through a rough-hewn yellow cedar door, the wine cellar serves as the highlight of the tour. Inside, light filters down from small, high windows in the tower, requiring visitors to pause for a moment until their eyes adjust to the dark. The intersecting geometries of the orthogonal tower and the cellar vaults create a Piranesi-like space with granite walls visible between the board-formed concrete ribs.

See the May 2003 issue of Architectural Record for full coverage of this project.

Formal name of Project:
Mission Hill Family Estate

Location:
Westbank, British Columbia

Gross square footage:
200,000 s.f.

Total construction cost:
$21 million

Owner:
Mission Hill Family Estate
www.missionhillwinery.com

Architect:
Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects
108 First Avenue South, 4th Floor
Seattle, WA 98104
Phone: 206/624-54670
Fax: 206/624-3730
www.olsonsundberg.com