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Architects: Atelier 405
- Area: 2500 m²
- Year: 2015
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Photographs:Fernando Guerra | FG+SG, Luís Coelho
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Lead Architects: Anabela Almeida Coelho; João Almeida Abreu
Text description provided by the architects. The Douro territory from northern Portugal has the most antique demarcated wine regions in the world. The town of São João da Pesqueira historically is the center of this region, and as a way to preserve the traditions of ancient knowledge that goes from wine production to the technics and traditions of hard-working people, decided to build a Wine Museum.
Located near the town center, the museum arises as a half-buried building, behind a nineteenth-century wine press building. Restored and included in the museum main exhibition, the winepress is an independent construction capable to produce wine in an archaic way. Has also a temporary exhibition gallery. The main building is distributed through a vertical arrangement of six floors. The exhibition spaces are developed between tunnels and galleries where the contrast between light and shadow is explored in different visual relationships provided by gaps between floors.
The entire space becomes unified by sunlight filtered by a concave glass steel structure covered in brown zinc, and by the contrast between textured wood and raw concrete walls. The building materials and construction methods are simple traditional wall building and woodworking, which reflects the austerity of the region.
