September 12

lecture series
"FROM THE MUSES TO ARÍNZANO. WINERIES IN TIERRA ESTELLA".

The wine landscape. Moneo and Arínzano

Manuel Blasco
Architect

The reflection is the intervention of man on the landscape for the cultivation of vines, forming a new structure that builds a landscape on the natural landscape.

Vineyards, like olive oil, have hardly modified the orography of the territory, as extensive irrigation crops have had to do.

The vine has become the "patron saint", the module that expresses very well the reason for each of them.

The second reflection was on the culture of the spaces in the wineries where the grapes are destemmed, pressed, the must is made and then aged until it becomes wine.

The history of wineries was briefly traced, from the Egyptians, through Greek images, Roman villas, and the cellars of convents, to the first quality production cellars in the primitive chateaux.

The phylloxera was the initial moment for the take-off of the cultivation in Spain, appearing together with the prestigious wineries of La Rioja, Andalusia, etc., the cooperative movement, very well defined in Catalonia, where the winery began to free itself and build itself as the new cathedrals of the 20th century.

The final part was already the reflection between the wineries of Arínzano, which the Chivite families had already planted and where Rafael Moneo, understanding the friendly, round, balanced landscape, projects the winery as a space adapted to the energy of the place, putting the functional layout as a landscape in turn of the theatrical representation of the rest of the architectures that existed there. Scenario in which the volumes of the Torre de Armas, the Caserón and the Neoclassical Church are projected forming a harmonious whole as is the landscape of Arínzano itself.

The counterpoint are the landscapes of the Catalan Priorat, or the Bierzo Leonese, in which Álvaro Palacios decides to sink his wine search. All this makes the architecture acquires in the same architect Moneo a more tragic condition in the conception and subsequent construction of the last winery built by the architect from Navarre.