moral arquitectura: the castle winery, palencia

‘the castle winery’ by moral arquitectura, palencia, spainimage © jorge lópez-condeall images courtesy of moral arquitectura

‘time is what builds it,a lost place, a real place.a path that is always open. it is the work of a family, of a people, of a life.the work belongs to the land, only the hand transformed the inside of the hill the ancient gallery was already there. it was always there. this project seeks to define a sequence of sensations,a mouth that swallows you and takes you to its entrails. the dryness of the place, the crudeness of the seasons transform into rugosity. day by day…there was no exact plan- it was an intuitive work, it was a hard process, it was an experimental toil. a heavy, firm, deep material… scarred by pressure, weather and time’

– fernando moral andres, architect

in a landscape dotted with natural wine cellars, cavernous voids in the rocky hillsides, madrid-based practice moral arquitectura has just completed ‘the castle winery,’ a restored underground vault that focuses on the development of the subterranean void over the constructionof auxiliary structures. the cave, carved away by countless man-hours and the claw of a hammer will contain the new dining area, bringing visitors in direct contact with the ground from where the product originates. thousands of marks shape the vaulted spaces like tiny scars thatexpress the intense intimate labor dedicated to the task. at the mouth, a new structure is cast with material from the earth, using offset woodenplanks as form work that leave a rectilinear alien language somehow born of the land. the new addition will contain the bar, kitchen and services in a building that although is made up of a foreign architectural language, fits discreetly into its ancient context.

contextual videovideo © jorge lópez-conde

highly textured walls define the edges of the vaultsimage © jorge lópez-conde