undjurekbrüggen and AFEA Stack Fieldstone, Clay and Raw Larch into a Concrete-Free Vineyard Store in Werder

HAIN is small by any measure: 33 m² of storage, pressing and office space for an organic vineyard in Werder (Havel), the island town in the Havelland west of Berlin and Potsdam. The site sits on a large meadow at the foot of the vines, next to a species-rich nature reserve along the river. undjurekbrüggen designed it with the collective AFEA between 2021 and 2025. Belwerk Baukollektiv, a construction collective of architecture students, built it. The lead team was Christian Cotting, Hannes Herbst, Emily Schlatter, Jakob Wolters and Jurek Brüggen.

The building is interesting because of its materials, and because of how literally the architects follow their own rules. The frame is undried local larch. The walls, ceiling and floor are clay brick, a clay cap ceiling and rammed earth. The base is reused fieldstone and brick. The team states that no concrete or composite materials were used. The stated ambition goes further than avoiding harm: the buildings should help regenerate climate, nature and the built environment. Plenty of projects claim that. HAIN backs the claim with walls that double as habitat and with a building fabric that could go back to the ground.

Two Small Buildings on an Open Meadow

The ensemble is two very different pieces. One is a heavy stone cube. The other is a light timber pavilion clad in translucent corrugated panels. Both sit on a clearing ringed by mature oaks and poplars, with vineyard rows rising behind. A brick paving pad links them, and that is the only hard surface. Everything else is grass.

We like the restraint of the siting. Neither building tries to frame a view or perform for the river. They behave like farm sheds: placed where the work happens, sized to the task, and quiet enough that the trees still dominate the picture.

A Stone Wall That Works as Habitat

The stone cube is the project's signature. Rounded fieldstones are stacked dry and held in place by a grid of slender horizontal members, with mesh behind. The result reads somewhere between a gabion and a drystone wall. The close-up shows how much depth the stones have. Their gaps are cavities, not mortar joints.

Those cavities are the point. The architects intend the layered fieldstone to work as habitat, which makes sense next to a nature reserve. Insects, small reptiles and nesting birds tend to find dry stone walls before anyone else does. The facade is a surface the meadow can move into. That is a more convincing version of the regenerative claim than a planted roof bolted onto a concrete box.

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