Hall Winery is somewhat different than the office’s other winery projects at Riscal and Le Clos Jordan. In addition to the construction of a ground-up production facility, the building is also the venue for wine-tasting events and other visitor related activities. The mild climate in Napa, California offered us an unparalleled opportunity to blend the winery’s exterior landscapes with new architecture to create a fully-integrated visitor experience.
In 2003, Kathryn and her husband Craig Hall acquired a site near the town of St. Helena in Napa Valley. Their vision was to create a world-class winery; an unparalleled visitor experience; and to develop the adjacent landscaped areas to display sculptures from the Halls' extensive art collection.
Collaborating with the Lail Design Group, specialists in winery planning and design, we first created a master plan. This plan consisted of three state-of-the-art production warehouses and a hospitality center dedicated to the wine tour - with tasting areas and and retail sales. Each of these programmatic elements is articulated as a series of discreet buildings and each is located around a central courtyard, with the renovated historic Bergfeld building as the focal point.
We imagined that each wine tour on the property would be organized around the courtyard bringing visitors from the landscaped exterior areas, through the renovated historic Bergfeld building to the wine cellars and finally to the hospitality center itself, situated close to a large reflecting pool.
The hospitality center, located at the western end of the central courtyard, serves as the architectural highlight of the facility and the culmination of the winery tour. The facility includes a wine library and kitchen on the lower level, and a number of wine tasting areas on the upper level. Using a sequence of physical models to refine the inter-connection of the various program spaces (from left to right); we arrived at a final design that is articulated as series of discreet smaller volumes - each clad in natural materials such as wood and stone.
The most prominent architectural feature of our design was a free-form trellis which was to envelop the hospitality center – serving both to provide shade for visitors and to minimize any solar-glare resulting from our extensive use of glass. Our sequence of models (from bottom to top) represents the development of this trellis feature.
We hoped that the woven texture of the trellis would afford an experience of being under the canopy of a large tree in full leaf (image on left). The bold sculptural expression of the trellis was also intended to unify the discreet buildings beneath. We envisioned the trellis could be fabricated with lightweight bent wood and this idea was put to the test with a full-scale mock up on the site in Napa (image on right).
Unfortunately, the project was cancelled shortly after the groundbreaking ceremony as a result of the economic crisis of 2008. However, it remains as one of the most fruitful collaborative experience I had with the client during my time at the office.
The projects in this section were designed and executed during my time at Gehry Partners LLP (the office). I am grateful to Mr. Gehry and the team at the office for their generosity and support over the years. All intellectual property rights of these projects continue to be owned by the office unless otherwise mentioned. The narrative texts on the projects are entirely personal, they do not represent the views or opinions of the office, its clients or any other third party or organization.