19 October

lecture series
LAETIFICAT COR HOMINIS. WINE CULTURE IN NAVARRA

Wine, art and architecture

Patxi Mangado Beloqui
Architect
summary by Igor Garjón Sanz
 

The discussion paper was degree scroll Wine, art and architecture, and was a brief tour of the recent architecture of wineries in Navarra, Spain and abroad. The architect stated that he did not consider himself an expert on wine, and that he saw his talk more as an exercise in "opinion" than as the lecture of a scholar.

Patxi Mangado began by explaining that wine architecture "has an industrial part and a magical part". This magical component has to do with the fact that, traditionally, the earth has had to be excavated to create a winery, with all the links that this act has with the mysterious and the mythical. The wine itself has this magical condition because it is so linked to the time factor, it needs months to mature and become a quality product.

Mangado insisted that these subway spaces, which the winemakers of yesteryear built without a desire to pursue beauty, are much more charming than many of the constructions of today's architects, whose eagerness for exhibitionism and ostentation has led to the creation of spaces that hinder rather than help the creation of wine.

The exhibition was accompanied at all times by magnificent photographs of wineries from different periods that reinforced the thesis that the expert maintained throughout his talk.

The first image of the introduction focused on a door, which evoked the mystery and the desire to enter that other world that is the winery. Next to the photo was the plan of the structure of that same winery: a mysterious, subway world, with its galleries, its secret corners and its mysteries. The speaker explained how, without that desire to create something visually impressive, winemakers in pre-industrial times were able to create spaces that conveyed great beauty. "This is an architecture capable of generating fantastic spaces without the need for an architect," said Patxi Mangado as he projected the image of huge pillar-like amphorae to demonstrate how, unconsciously, beauty had been generated in these spaces.

From this "architecture without an architect, without a cultural, but rather a functional will", in the Contemporary Age a different architecture was created, responding to the times of industrialization that Spain and Western civilization in general were going through. Mangado explained how in Spain there were two very interesting currents in the architecture of spaces destined for wine, with Catalonia and Andalusia as the focal points of each.

In Catalonia, the architecture of wine cellars caught the fever of Modernism, which developed in this region of Spain for some ten or twenty years. The Catalan cellars created at this time did not have the decorative intensity of other Catalan Modernist buildings, but there is an overabundance of structure in them that is linked to the buildings of Gaudí and other great names of Catalan Modernism. The author of the Sagrada Familia himself built some cellars for his benefactor Güell at this time.

The other focus of interest pointed out by speaker was Andalusia, where the cellars that began to be built between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century were clearly inspired by the arches and pillars of the Mosque of Cordoba. In general, it is an architecture that is not subterranean, but is developed above ground. A striking example of this school is the royal Bodega de la Concha of 1869, designed by the famous French engineer Gustave Eiffel, or the Lustau wineries in Jerez, where the influence of the arcades of the Mosque of Cordoba can be seen more clearly.

After approaching these two architectural trends "of cultured origin" that stood out in the 19th and 20th centuries, Patxi Mangado turned his gaze to more recent and varied examples of winery architecture. In this part of the talk, he confessed his conviction that the architecture currently being done for spaces destined for wine is, in general, a failed architecture: "around the years 2000 and 2005, we find an architecture that is more for show than for serving wine", he declared.

This modern architecture has been discarding the millenary rite of digging the earth to give rise to visually impressive buildings that, however, are often inefficient for the storage and conservation of wine. The expert pointed out that wine architecture has been infected in recent years with what he himself defined as "a somewhat tacky, nouveau riche component, which is far removed from wine culture".

However, not everything is negative, highlighting examples of architects who have managed to create attractive buildings that also respect the conditions required for the production of a good wine. One of them is Rafael Moneo from Navarra, who in 2002 was able to create a structure integrated with the environment and the needs of wine in the Señorío de Arínzano winery. Another interesting example of good wine architecture was provided by the Chilean Smiljan Radik in the VIK winery, where there is an important subway construction while on the surface the aesthetics are achieved through the combination of stone and water. The speaker especially highlighted the work of great Italian architects, such as Renzo Piano, whose La Rocca Winery offers a beautiful play of light that does not interfere with the process of creating and storing wine; but for him, without a doubt, the best winery architect today is the Portuguese Álvaro Siza.

Patxi Mangado concluded his lecture by stating that there is a strong connection between wine and architecture: "both are closely related to time, to mystery," said the architect, "and current constructions do not respond so much to the architecture of mystery as to the architecture of the mercantile".