This project consists on the design of a wine cellar, including the necessary buildings for the management of the business. The plot presents a fully consolidated structure and organization (functional and formal) based on terraces. It also contains five existing buildings, four of them are currently in ruins. 

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The pattern of settlement in Galicia, is characterized by the existence of almost 30,000 rural settlements, (most of them have a small population, e.g. Cabanelas). The geographical dispersion of these settlements is another distinct feature from other regions.

 

The importance of architecture and urban planning associated with the regeneration project of a place with cultural, gastronomic and oenological tourism potential can be used as a responsible policy to control land use and additionally, recover high value added spaces which are almost uninhabited.

 

The development of these rural areas could be promoted by architectural proposals based on a clear and useful activity as a tool to provide infrastructure, facilities, services and housing. This is the reason why the winery project approach is consistent. The amount of grapes harvested in the plot is not enough to meet the maximum production capacity of the wine cellar, i.e. 10,000 wine bottles per year, therefore, the exploitation of adjacent lands is required. Similarly, the project is an opportunity to improve the mobility of the viticulture’s activity within the property, such as communicating isolated bags of land with the rest of the plot, shortening routes, diversifying activities along the plot to promote both the traditional dynamism of the Spanish villages and its contact with nature... 

 

In order to promote the ideas previously presented, the objectives of the architectural proposal will be achieved by:

1. Placing the wine cellar in the southern edge of the plot, and therefore occupying a bag of currently unused and not topographically suitable land for cultivation.

2. Renovating two of the ruins: one as a home and the other one as a shop and visitor centre.

3. Preserving the rest of the constructions in the existing state of ruin .

4. Demolishing one of the sheds and replacing it with a new building comprised of changing-rooms and space for workers.

5. Demolishing the shed located at the west of the plot, freeing the necessary space to manoeuvre while loading and unloading goods.

 

The different degrees of intervention in the existing ruins are given by both the project needs and the analysis of pre-intervention studies conducted in this design thesis. The information gathered from local people showed the necessity of intervening in different ways. Additionally, as some of the buildings had been in ruins for a long time, a sensible intervention methodology was considered. For instance, conserving some of the existing structures, but not renovating them according to new functions in order to not alter either the collective perception of the place, or the essence that they have reached over time in this state. By contrast, other buildings requiring restoration works, tolerate renovation and new functions, i.e. despite their deterioration they have held activities until recently. The pre-existing buildings considered neither useful nor valuable are eliminated, nevertheless their traces will remain in the new pavement.

 

The aim of the whole project and specially the new wine cellar building is to not produce SCALE POLLUTION. This means disproportion in the relationship between the sizes of various architectural elements that shape an urban development, whatever the scale, altering its characteristics.