Principles
- Gardens are shaped by the forces and elements which act upon them. They are timeless reflecting soil, climate, geology and climate. Wine too is shaped by terroir. A terroir wall was thus installed by extracting soil from wine farms and creating a vertical landscape of the South African wine regions.
- Gardens are shaped by their DNA. The helix thus becomes an important formal element which is reflected in the design of the staircase and the wine racks
- Beauty in nature is defined by proportion. The design looks at the oldest form of proportion namely the Fibonacci spiral. The form of proportion has been used by the Greeks who recognized the dominating role it plays in the proportion of the human body.
- The cellar is designed as a large solid rock which has been carved out to form the space. The exterior is raw and natural which then undergoes a process of carving and extraction. The focus must not be on the dichotomy but must rather capture the process in-between. It must explore the state of flux where the raw becomes the processed. The “stone” and the crafting thereof thus bridges the gap between tradition and technology, between what is physical and that which is intangible, and between relative permanence and ephemerality.
Concept
The initial concept was not really about creating a building but more about creating a garden which you can celebrate wine in. So how does one set about creating an architectural garden? The first step is to look at what is around you and what visual guides are present which can shape and form the space. When I looked at the existing site the first thing that struck me was the large granite boulders. The immediate response was that the cellar should echo the solidity and materiality of the rock forming a carved out space.
