CRACK: Winery Architecture Carved Into the Landscape

CRACK is a modern winery architecture proposal that turns the act of making, tasting, and experiencing wine into a spatial journey through land, production, and culture. Designed by 表 陳, the project was recognized as an Editor’s Choice entry of Pour 2020. It presents a winery not as an isolated industrial building, but as a terrain-based architectural system that grows out of the vineyard itself.

The project begins with a simple but powerful idea: a crack cut into a gentle slope. This crack becomes more than a formal gesture. It becomes an entrance sequence, a circulation spine, a production route, a visitor path, and a symbolic cut through the relationship between nature and human activity. Through this move, CRACK explores how winery architecture can blur the boundary between industry, landscape, hospitality, and sensory experience.

A Modern Winery Design Rooted in Landscape

The central ambition of CRACK is to reduce the visual and physical impact of the building on the surrounding vineyard landscape. Instead of placing a large industrial complex above the land, the project hides much of the architecture underground. This allows the vineyard to remain visually dominant while the building works quietly beneath and within the terrain.

From a distance, the winery appears as a low, restrained architectural intervention. The vineyard roof, sloping planes, white walls, and observation tower create a composition that feels both minimal and monumental. The architecture does not attempt to compete with the hills. Instead, it frames them, cuts through them, and allows visitors to understand the landscape through movement.

This makes CRACK a strong example of contemporary winery architecture, where the building is not only a place of production but also a cultural destination. It is designed for wine making, tourism, tasting, hospitality, weddings, meditation, and landscape observation.

The Crack as Concept and Circulation

The project’s form is generated from a crack that opens within the slope and extends toward a viewing tower. This architectural crack creates a sequence of spaces that guide visitors from the public entrance into deeper areas of the complex. It is both a physical route and a conceptual narrative.

The project separates tourist circulation from factory circulation. This is one of its most important planning decisions. Workers follow a direct production route connected to grape receiving, crushing, fermentation, pressing, filtration, storage, bottling, and distribution. Visitors move through tasting areas, exhibition zones, halls, an atrium, guest rooms, restaurants, and observation points without disrupting the winery’s functional workflow.

This separation allows the winery to remain operational while still becoming an immersive visitor experience. People can observe parts of the wine-making process, including storage barrels and production spaces, while the daily work of the factory continues efficiently.

A Building Between Industry, Nature, and Culture

CRACK describes itself as a building used to carry both the oldest and most modern human activities. Wine production has ancient cultural roots, but modern wineries require advanced systems of processing, storage, hospitality, logistics, and environmental control. The project brings these demands together in a single architectural structure.

The design understands wine tasting as a complete sensory experience. It is not only about drinking wine, but also about seeing the vineyard, smelling the barrels, moving through cool underground spaces, observing the process, and understanding the relationship between land and production.

This is where the project becomes more than a winery. It becomes a cultural landscape. The architecture encourages visitors to experience four emotional conditions described in the concept: arousal, encouragement, revelry, and intoxication. These qualities connect the building to the festive and ritualistic history of wine culture, while also giving it a contemporary spatial identity.

Programmatic Complexity Inside a Simple Form

The project studies surrounding winery buildings and identifies four broad functional types. Some wineries focus on brewing, storage, tasting, dining, and purchasing. Others add accommodation, meetings, weddings, and expanded hospitality. CRACK combines these programs into a more complete winery complex.

The final proposal includes production facilities, tasting rooms, exhibition spaces, restaurants, hotel rooms, meeting areas, a wedding area, a lobby, an atrium, meditation spaces, a swimming pool, and an observation tower. These functions are arranged carefully so that public, private, and industrial routes do not collide.

The guest rooms are positioned to allow tourists to reach them efficiently through the hall, while the production areas are connected through a more direct working route. The atrium sits at the center of the building, using skylight and spatial openness to bring ventilation and daylight into the underground structure.

Underground Architecture and Thermal Performance

One of the strongest architectural decisions in CRACK is the decision to bury much of the winery below the surface. This reduces the building’s visual impact and uses the natural thermal properties of the land. By placing production spaces underground, the design creates more stable conditions for wine production, storage, and aging.

This strategy also transforms the roof into a continuation of the vineyard. The building is not simply placed on the site. It becomes part of the landform. The vineyard continues over and around the architecture, allowing the complex to appear as an extension of the rural landscape.

This gives the project a low-key but memorable architectural presence. The white walls, sharp cuts, folded surfaces, and tower create contrast, while the buried mass and vineyard roof reduce the overall scale of the intervention.

The Visitor Journey Through CRACK

The visitor experience begins with arrival at the entrance, where the building gradually reveals itself through the cut in the land. From there, visitors may move toward the tasting hall, exhibition spaces, restaurant, atrium, hotel reception, or observation tower.

The tasting hall allows visitors to connect directly with the wine culture of the site. The atrium offers a quieter moment of pause, light, and meditation. The observation tower gives visitors a broader view of the vineyard, turning the landscape into part of the architectural experience.

The journey is not linear in a conventional sense. Instead, it is layered. Visitors move between underground rooms, open courtyards, elevated views, production glimpses, and landscape paths. This creates a complex spatial narrative, where the winery is experienced through changing light, scale, temperature, texture, and movement.

Architecture as a Landmark Without Dominating the Site

The observation tower is one of the most recognizable elements of the proposal. It gives the winery a visible landmark, allowing the building to be identified from a distance. At the same time, most of the project remains embedded in the terrain.

This balance between visibility and restraint is central to the design. The building needs to be distinguishable, but it also needs to respect the vineyard. CRACK achieves this through a low horizontal layout, underground massing, and a vertical tower that works as a marker rather than a dominating object.

The result is a winery architecture proposal that is both subtle and symbolic. It limits territorial impact while creating a strong architectural identity.

Juror Comments and Critical Reflection

Juror Anouk Legendre described the project as interesting and noted that its inscription in the landscape is successful. Her comment recognizes one of the proposal’s clearest strengths: the way the building sits within the terrain rather than overpowering it. However, she also pointed out that the project is somewhat complicated to understand, that the interior spaces present limited quality, and that environmental aspects and parking are not fully developed.

This critique is important because CRACK is conceptually rich, but its complexity may require clearer communication. The project’s sectional logic, circulation routes, program hierarchy, and underground spatial experience are ambitious, yet they need to be presented with greater clarity to make the interior quality more convincing.

Juror Alejandro García Pedrón praised the project for its good analysis and strong starting point. He observed that the architecture is representative and phenomenological while limiting its impact on the territory. This supports the project’s core ambition: to produce a meaningful winery experience without excessive intervention in the landscape. He also suggested that a deeper reflection on materials and construction process would have strengthened the proposal.

Together, the juror comments frame CRACK as a promising and thoughtful work of winery architecture. Its landscape strategy, experiential ambition, and formal clarity are strong. At the same time, the project could benefit from further development in material detailing, environmental systems, parking strategy, and interior atmosphere.

Why CRACK Matters in Contemporary Winery Architecture

CRACK is relevant because it challenges the conventional image of a winery. Instead of treating wine production as a purely industrial function or wine tourism as a decorative add-on, the project merges both into a single spatial experience.

It recognizes that winery architecture today must perform multiple roles. It must support production, attract visitors, respect the land, create memorable spaces, and communicate the cultural identity of wine. CRACK responds to these demands through a design that is embedded, sequential, symbolic, and experiential.

The project’s greatest strength lies in its ability to turn the vineyard into architecture and architecture into landscape. The crack, the underground rooms, the atrium, the tower, and the vineyard roof all work together to create a building that feels discovered rather than imposed.

CRACK by 表 陳 is an ambitious exploration of modern winery architecture. As an Editor’s Choice entry of Pour 2020, it proposes a building that carries ancient wine culture through a contemporary architectural language. It hides production beneath the land, separates visitors from factory circulation, creates a sensory route through the vineyard, and uses the landscape as both material and experience.

While the project could be strengthened through clearer interior development, environmental planning, parking strategy, and construction logic, its conceptual foundation remains compelling. CRACK shows how winery architecture can be more than a production facility. It can become a journey through terrain, culture, memory, and taste.