The new Zymè winery, made in Vicenza stone from Grassi Pietre, follows the wine industry current trend: the architecture is voted to the purpose of transfer culture and creating emotions.
CONCEPT
The project, conceived by the architect Moreno Zurlo (www.acme-studio.it), offers a whole vision of space through a harmonious relationship between the materials of modernity, living traditions and high quality. The space modelling and the use of materials therefore take on an extremely engaging narrative and expressive value. It is an example of sustainable architecture, which supports the criterion of the “genius loci”, able to integrate itself into the context without causing upheaval to the surrounding environment.
THE PROJECT
The new Zymè winery comes from a pre-existing nucleus marked by a strong and distinctive character. This is a former quarry of the 1400s where the genius of the place is so powerful, rich and strongly defined and suggests an architectural solution capable of enhancing its peculiarities, feeding on the environment itself. The relationship between habitat, history and function is dynamic. The body is covered with the stone extracted during excavation and through explicit openings accompanied by Corten steel inserts. This solution recalls the pre-existing “quarry” environment, nowadays designated to the refinement and aging of the wine in wooden barriques. The development of the external profile, together with the planting of the hanging gardens, creates a sort of irregularity on the crowning of the building, in order to mitigate the visual impact of the central body and to harmonize with the side of the hill amphitheatre of Via Cà del Pipa. Other basic reasons of the project are linked to specific needs of a productive nature, so that the naturalness and genuineness of the wine during storage and aging are guaranteed by the condition that the product is not subjected to sunlight and that the environment is stable from the point of thermal sight. Building underground is an effective choice on the double side of energy saving and bioclimatic.
Grassi Pietre supplies all the stone elements for the new Zymè cellar, in particular by creating three staircases and internal ramps, like a fan. For these interventions, 3 cm thickness Vicenza Giallo Dorato was used, laid in mortar over an iron structure. The choice of Giallo Dorato is linked to a careful aesthetic analysis by the architect Zurlo and the staff of Grassi Pietre: this type of Vicenza stone is in fact very similar to that already present on site.
Grassi Pietre created a futuristic structure within Zymè: the so-called “Archive”, walls made up of pentagonal cells, whose purpose is precisely to “store the wine”, and keep it safe.
A decidedly unconventional solution, the very elegant bottle-aging shelving after barrel aging catalyses the eyes of visitors, who are fascinated by it.
Even the “archive” is made of Vicenza Giallo Dorato stone, with 3 cm thick surfaces. Each cell was assembled in the Grassi Pietre factories and subsequently laid with glue together with a fiberglass mesh. This choice ensures the reinforcement of the structure which, even in the event of an earthquake or one of the elements breaking, will not collapse, avoiding the so-called “domino collapse”.
The total size of the “archive” is 16.9 x 5 meters high, for a depth of 60 cm. An imposing realization that, thanks to the design choice, shows itself as a huge abstract painting.
Project by: Moreno Zurlo – AcMe studio Tot. supply: about 300 sqm. of elements Thickness: 2 and 3 cm
