137 Dominus Winery
Yountville, Napa Valley, California, USAProject 1995Realization 1996-1998
The winery is situated on an exceptional location in Napa Valley. Our client, the renowned Bordeaux wine producer, Christian Moeuix, recognized the potential of this terroir for producing quality grapes in comparison to numerous other vineyards. Early obsidian finds reveal that the vineyard was once an Indian settlement. Moreover, from the vineyard known as Napanook, wines of exceptional quality had already been produced in the mid 20th century. After ten years of replanting, Dominus reached a level of quality which reflected the full potential of the land. Thus, in 1995 Moueix and his wife, Cherise, commissioned Herzog & de Meuron to build a winery.
The building is divided into three functional units: the tank room with huge chrome tanks for the first stage of fermentation, the Barrique cellar where the wine matures in oak vats for two years, and the storeroom where the wine is bottled, packed in wooden cases, and stored until it is sold. We designed to house these three functional units in a linear building some 100m / 333ft long, 25m / 82ft wide, and 9m / 30ft high. The building bridges the main axis, the main path of the winery, and is thus in the midst of the vineyards. Vines in California can grow to a height well over 2m / 6ft, such that the building is completely integrated into the linear, geometric texture of the vineyard.
We have separated the functional units on the ground floor with covered passageways in-between. The main path of the vineyard passes through the largest of these. This large covered space serves as an open, public reception area, where paths, linking up all the important parts of the winery, intersect. This area accesses the Barrique cellar, the degustation room, the offices and roof terraces, the cellar man’s rooms, and the huge doors to the tank room. Guests are received in the degustation room to taste the wine. A glass wall provides a view of the entire cellar filled with wooden vats. The last unit, the storeroom, where the cases of wine are stored, lies to the south.
The climate in Napa Valley is extreme: very hot by day, very cold at night. We wanted to design a structure that would be able to take advantage of these conditions. In the United States air conditioning is automatically installed to maintain even room temperatures. Architectural strategies which activate the walls in order to regulate the temperatures are unknown.
In front of the façades, we placed gabions, a device used in river engineering, that is, wire containers filled with stones. Added to the walls, they form an inert mass that insulates the rooms against heat by day and cold at night. We chose local basalt that ranges from dark green to black and blends in beautifully with the landscape. The gabions are filled more or less densely as needed so that parts of the walls are very impenetrable while others allow the passage of light: natural light comes into the rooms during the day and artificial light seeps through the stones at night. You could describe our use of the gabions as kind of stone wickerwork with varying degrees of transparency, more like skin than like traditional masonry.
We built a first mock-up to scale in Basel to test the quality of varying transparencies as well as the technical feasibility of the structure. A second mock-up was built at full height of nine meters on the site in Yountville. These full-scale tests were necessary in order to become familiar with this new architectural element even if it is nothing but a wall of stones.
Herzog & de Meuron, 1997
多明纳斯酒庄（Dominus Winery）位于美国加利福尼亚州纳帕谷（Napa Valley）的Yountville，由赫尔佐格/德梅隆（Herzog & de Meuron）建筑师事务所设计，于1995年开始建造，1998年竣工。这座酒庄的建造旨在为著名的波尔多葡萄酒生产商Christian Moeuix生产高质量的葡萄酒。经过了十年的重新种植，Dominus达到了这块土地的全部潜力。这是一座极具代表性的建筑，不仅在建筑设计和酿酒技术方面具有创新性，也在环保方面有所突破。
建筑师将酒庄划分为三个功能单元：一个铬质罐房、一个橡木桶房和一个储藏室。这些功能单元被设计到一个长100m、宽25m、高9m的线性建筑中。建筑师将这些功能单元在一楼分开，通过有顶棚的通道连接。主要的通道穿过最大的通道，并成为一个开放的、公共的接待区域。这个区域连接着酒庄的所有重要部分，包括橡木桶房、品酒室、办公室和屋顶露台、储藏室以及通向铬质罐房的大门。建筑师利用玻璃墙提供了整个酒窖内部的视野，让客人品尝葡萄酒。最后一个单元，储藏室，位于南部。
建筑师为了适应纳帕谷极端的气候，采用了一些策略来控制室内温度。在立面前面，他们放置了一种装有石头的设备，称为铁丝网笼。铁丝网笼在墙上的分布形成了惰性质量，可以抵御白天的高温和夜间的低温。建筑师选择当地的玄武岩，它的颜色从深绿到黑色不等，与周围的景观融为一体。铁丝网笼根据需要填充得更密集，因此墙的不同部分的透明度也不同，一些部分允许光线通过，这样自然光可以在白天进入房间，而人工光则在晚上穿过石头渗透进来。这种建筑师对铁丝网笼的运用可以被描述为一种石头编制品，具有不同程度的透明度，更像皮肤而不是传统的砖石结构。
Near san francisco, the Napa valley retreats up the ridges of the mountain chain that defines the Pacific side of North America, its benign climate being used for the production of great wines known as Napanouk since the beginning of the century. The exceptional grape growing conditions drew the prestigious Bordeaux vintner Christian Moueix to this corner of California. After ten years’ work, he began to produce an excellent wine, Dominus, in such high demand that a new cellar was required. Trained along trellises, the vines impose a predictable, parallel geometry on the landscape which contrasts with the sinuous contours of the surrounding hills. The new building is placed in the centre of the property in alignment with the succession of furrows in the earth, crossing the total volumetry of the estate like a piece of land art on the track dividing the valley.
The main spaces required by the brief – a room for the chrome vats of the first stage of fermentation, a chamber for oak barrels where the wine is matured for two years and a storeroom for bottling and packing the product – are laid out in a prism of extreme proportions following the logic of a work process that has been decanted over thousands of years of tradition. The three functional areas are spatially separated by two vestibules that perforate the building crosswise and frame the views of the vineyards. The largest room opens up onto the track that crosses the valley and receives visitors with a tasting area that overlooks the wooden barrels through a pane of glass. The small void houses the loading bay between the chrome vat room where the grapes are unloaded and the storeroom from where the bottles of wine are shipped out across the world.
The local climate has large day-night thermal swings, and so the project sought strategies to keep a constant temperature inside this above-ground building. Shunning the light, the barrels hide behind the cage of shade formed by wire mesh gabions. These perforated cages which modulate the volume with a regular mesh are filled with loose stones that vary in size according to the function lying behind them. The smallest pieces of dark green basalt fill the dense cuirasse, its inert mass protecting the cellar and storage areas from heat and light, while the gaps between the largest boulders allow a measured amount of filtered light to enter the administration area.
