Fine wine
by Jonathan McGaha | January 31, 2009 12:00 am
Constructed in a private and confined park-likesetting in western Sonoma County, just outside the town of Sebastopol, Calif., the 2,880-square foot
(268-m2) Sonoma Wine Barn is used for wine production. The wine barn was designed to be an object in a landscape, an architectural boundary at one end of the land together with a single-family house at the other end that creates an edge to an outdoor landscaped precinct.
According to architect Mark Horton of Mark Horton Architecture, San Francisco, as an object, the building expresses itself in a very formalistic way through the manipulation of volume, material and form.
The wine barn consists of essentially two rooms with a series of service areas attached. On the lower level, a large garage-like room is used for most of the wine production tasks, while the second floor features a single room that houses the non-production aspects of the business, including the office/marketing tasks.
The building features two thick walls on the east and west sides clad in Parklex. The Parklex panels-consisting of two layers of veneer sandwiched around a Bakelite center-are from Parklex, Navarra, Spain, and supplied by Finland Color Plywood Corp., Venice, Calif. These walls are expressed as fin walls at the entry side of the building and thick parapets at the second floor deck. They are punctured as required to introduce doors and windows on the east and west sides of the building.
The roof starts at the north side of the building, which reaches to the ground and then rises up and slopes forward to create the second fl oor space above the thick wood planes of the first floor. The walls enclosing the space above the first floor are clad in aluminum siding or glazed window wall to differentiate the two volumes. The roof, expressed as a formal element, cantilevers both south and east of the building, allowing it to shade the building from solar gain.
The wine barn utilizes approximately 2,000 square feet (186 m2) of 18-inch
(457-mm) Snap Seam metal panels from AEP Span, Dallas, for the roof, in addition to the vertical plane of the building at the north side. Also used were 750 square feet (70 m2) of galvanized sheet-metal panels, painted to match aluminum, supplied by the general contractor. United States Aluminum, Waxahachie, Texas, supplied approximately 385 square feet (36 m2) of window wall systems for the project.
“The choice of the metal panels and the metal roof was a product of a number of conditions,” Horton said. “The single most important factor was the idea of installing a material that would need very little, if any, maintenance over the long term, as well as the near term. Additionally, the idea of installing a metal roof in Northern California, where forest fires are relatively prevalent, is always a good idea.
“And, architecturally, both metal systems work well with the Parklex panels-the darker metal roof provides a strong sense of protection and covering, and the light silver flat panels on the wall help to keep the building from appearing too heavy and act as a good contrast to the darker wood panels.”
Sonoma Wine Barn, Sebastopol, Calif.
Award: 2008 Redwood Empire Design Awards, Citation Award/Built Project
Architect: Mark Horton Architecture, San Francisco
General contractor: J. Bradford Construction, Rohnert Park, Calif.
Parklex supplier: Finland Color Plywood Corp., Venice, Calif.
Wood panels: Parklex, Navarra, Spain
Metal roof: AEP Span, Dallas
Window system: United States Aluminum, Waxahachie, Texas
Source URL: https://www.metalarchitecture.com/projects/fine-wine/