Adega Azores Wine Company / SAMI-arquitectos + drdh architects

A new wine cellar for the Azores Wine Company is located within the Unesco World Heritage vineyard landscape of Pico Island, one of the nine islands that form the mid-Atlantic, Azorean archipelago. In a manner not dissimilar to the island’s traditional wineries - small-scale structures located along the coast where wine was produced and family and friends were welcomed – the building combines spaces of production with those of conviviality and extended domesticity, within a single coherent form. Recalling the cloistered courtyard typologies of the religious institutions, Pico’s most significant historical structures, and the communities for whom wine was first produced, the building’s simple, geometrical volume defines a garden at its center. Enclosed by a covered perimeter, this intimate exterior space counterpoints the scale of the landscape beyond.