Wine Architecture: The Winery Boom

Since the mid-1980s, Austrian wine production has been explosive--garnering stellar reviews, awards and record export revenues. Contemporary architects have found the country ripe with opportunity for further experimentation in the field of wine architecture, which emerged in Napa Valley in the 1990s and became renowned with the 2001 Pritzker Prize-winning, Herzog and de Meuron-designed Dominus Winery (deemed "a combination of sensorial and intellectual pleasure" by Pritzker judge Jorge Silvetti). This publication presents a selection of nearly 70 projects in Lower Austria, Burgenland and Styria, and discusses how the combination of ground-breaking architecture--like the striking silver façade of Steven Holl-designed Loisium winery in Langenlois--and emerging wineries have been changing the face of the Austrian countryside for the past two decades. As Martin Rauchbauer, Deputy Director of the Austrian Cultural Forum, has observed, "The quality of wine architecture in Austria is seen as more than a transitory phenomenon. A new architectural language has developed, which cautiously takes into account traditional forms of building and at the same time presents self-confident interpretations of the requirements of contemporary winemaking."