Externally, the winery's colour palette and the sinuous, slender timber skeleton of the roof trusses converse quietly with the dramatic landscape of the Douro Valley and the zigzagging terraces of the vineyards. Inside, the combined industrial and visitor facility is almost sacral.
“When you stand in the ten-metre-high storage hall – which almost feels like a church, with light streaming down onto 50-year-old port barrels – a deep sense of timelessness and connection to the landscape takes hold,” says Sergio Rébelo, founder of the architecture practice that bears his name.
With a strong emphasis on the locally specific, the historical context and the roots of traditional Portuguese architecture, together with a clear point of departure in minimalist modernism, Quinta de Adorigos winery is a striking example of architecture that, with a respectful footprint, enhances the experience of a place's distinctive character. The building has also won a host of international awards.
The most challenging aspect of the project was designing a building that honours a sensitive landscape designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, while uniting tradition with modern methods of winemaking, says Sergio Rébelo.
“The Douro Valley demands deep spatial responsibility. We had to weave 1,200 square metres of interconnected bays into the steep, terraced slope without overwhelming the centuries-old topography.”
Architecture shaped by the landscape
The solution was to let the slope dictate the inner logic. The architecture naturally steps downwards, allowing the entire winemaking process to operate within a traditional, gravity-fed system common in the region.
Another advantage of the partially buried building is that it enables passive strategies for maintaining the wine storage area's indoor temperature between 14 and 16 degrees, in a location where outdoor temperatures range from –5 to +45 degrees from winter to summer. This is achieved by positioning the southern building envelope in contact with the ground – to exploit its thermal mass – while the main façade faces north, where sunlight is limited even in summer. In addition, a geothermal system produces electricity. Together, this keeps energy consumption low, significantly minimising the winery's environmental impact. The same approach applies to water; rainwater and used water are collected, purified and used for irrigation. Drinking water comes from artesian wells.
Working with nature and traditional material
The winery's materials echo the surrounding nature's palette of pinkish-brown, green and grey tones, in traditional materials and craftsmanship, but updated with modern technology. Local slate and granite were used for both the exterior elements and the internal concrete retaining walls.
But what is perhaps most striking about Quinta de Adorigo, both inside and out, are the roofs.
“What I'm most proud of ! How we transformed the traditional pitched roof into a continuous, sinuous and organically sculptural timber skeleton. It flows beautifully along the tangential curves of the vineyards,” says Sergio Rébelo.
The load-bearing structure of the interconnected bays consists of glulam frames and cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels, externally clad with prefabricated GRC façade panels (glass-fibre reinforced concrete), manufactured locally in northern Portugal.
A sculptural timber roof built to last
Portilame was the timber supplier and was responsible for on-site assembly. The glulam frames and CLT panels were primarily manufactured from high-quality, sustainably certified Nordic spruce.
“This specific choice of timber enabled us to achieve the roof's sweeping, organic curves with extreme geometric precision,” says Sergio Rébelo.
Timber structures have been used where the building does not touch the ground, also to minimise the use of concrete, which has reduced carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere by 40 per cent compared with what a building constructed entirely in concrete would emit.
Exposed to the effects of climate, all these materials develop beautiful tones and textures over time, better integrating the winery into its natural surroundings and ensuring the building improves with age, just like a fine port.
Atelier Sérgio Rebelo, is emerging as one of the leading exponents of the Porto School (FAUP). The school is the foremost expression of modern architecture in Portugal. It is defined by the importance placed on contextualising and integrating the functionalism and minimalism typical of modernism with the specific local and historical background of each work, as well as with the roots of traditional Portuguese architecture.
Freehand drawing is another hallmark of FAUP. Paper and pencil are seen as a central pedagogical tool for understanding space, context and human scale, thereby serving as a bridge between conceptual thinking and physical construction.
Text: Carl Johan Liljegren Photo: Fernando Guerra
