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CELLER del ROURE Winery and Residence in Moixent

Part 2 Project 2009
Eva González Jiménez
Universidad Politécnica de Valencia | Spain
My interest relies on how the project is appreciated from the long distance. The surrounding makes everything appear ridiculously small. The key is to assume dimensions and limits which appear when you confront the scenery with the intention of constructing something in it. I cannot imagine anything that is not willing to mix with the existing context that does not belong to its layout that does not understand the topography. Everything takes me to a certain way of interference that is related to burying, sculpting, to the underground way of making architecture.
I walk along a path which leaves vineyards to both sides and its perpendicular direction leaves an outstanding mark on the ground. This path reveals its desire to be important but the weak end does not. It is made for grape picking. To the west a very different path appears. Its layout is no longer straight but follows the wavy ravine. Beginning and end are not clearly defined.
I see two axes, one natural, one artificial. I understand that the programme of any winery is clearly related to this artificial axis as its lineal process requires a straight layout.
I decide to grip this artificial axis and scratch it to the end, till it gets to the mountain and penetrates the ground. As a result I sketch with my feet on the ground and my head under the earth. Two natures:
On one hand the plain landscape that changes colour and temperature, where the wind carries particles from one side to another… On the other hand, the mountain, which provides peace and constant temperature and humidity conditions in its inside. Two different situations… Anyway, has not a winery such a duality in its programme?
Every piece which needs to be supplied by a machine, involves noise and movement, whereas the large barrel space needs specific environment conditions and is fed with silence and darkness
On behalf of these thoughts, programme and nature sit along and listen to each other on every sketch.
…and I am not meaning ground nor plot but EARTH.



Eva Gonzalez’ project has something similar to the ancient way in which the farmer “hurts” the ground to recover it, to the way in which the plough opens furrows where the seeds become productive. It is an excellent project.

The idea of itinerary, or better, promenade appears as the conductive thread of the project, even from the first sketches. The formal and constructive solutions do not go away from that thread. This fact lends the project the quality of unity that improves the architectural fact. The project builds the landscape and completes its previous condition by adding a productive ingredient that makes it better, which demonstrates the sensibility of the authoress.

It is also peculiar the way in which the authoress has chosen to interpret the topography, to face the contour lines in a transversal way, going away from the terraced ground typical from the arable land and discovering another way to do it, a more dynamic way, inherited from the path.

A cadence, a rhythm is expressed in each space according to its function and its meaning inside the functional programme. It is materialized according to its relative location and its specific measure.

All decisions about materials and constructive systems have been pertinent. They show in a modest way the permanent architectonic ambition to bind the natural with the artificial, the craftwork with the technology, the previous environment with the new content, the existing with the projected, in short, the old with the new.

Tutor(s)

2009
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