Scuplting the void | The House of Wine in Oia

Abstract

My graduation project was about the design of “The house of wine” in Santorini. The project consists in designing a winery on the exact same location where old quarries once were placed on the outskirts of the village Oia, situated north of the Greek island Santorini. The quarries, a cultural landscape, are positioned right next to the town Oia having a big height-difference and as a consequence, they strongly demark a boundary between the town and the remaining surroundings. This separation has a strong impact on the local landscape and for this reason I wanted to explore the ways a boundary can be transformed from a separating element to a connecting one; explore the boundary as an architectural concept. The attention is focused on ways that a landscape of great importance can be treated and even preserved. Mass, corrosion, void, diversity, imperfection, contrasts. All these, are archetypal types that can be read and found in the island of Santorini. How does a contemporary intervention stand next to them? How does it become part of them? My answer is not based on the form and only the form. New materials are introduced, such as corten steel, contemporary ways of construction are used, but always having as a solid foundation the knowledge that I have acquired from the local way of constructing. The sculpting of the mass - which also refers to the local technique of cave houses – a process that happens from outside to inside can be parallelized with the traditional way of constructing, but using different methods and tools.Explore Lab 15ArchitectureArchitectur