Surrounded by the dominant Fremont Bridge and its interweaving highway systems, lie the overlooked cornerstone of Portland’s Eliot neighborhood. This studio’s objective was to challenge our preconceptions about the necessities for winemaking; utilizing our industrial northeast site to explore an alternative process, known as a gravity flow winery. This approach requires a downward slope that transports the fruit towards its eventual transubstantiation. Designing this type of winery, as well as public spaces to spectate and celebrate the winemaking process was also required.

 

Defined literally as ‘nest’ in Latin, ‘Nidus’ Winery refers to the assemblage of conditions that provide for protection of the winemaking process. As site surroundings emphasize passage instead of inhabitation, my intervention showcases transparency of the winery’s public and event space as an invitation. The manufacturing wing becomes cloaked in translucent cladding, emphasizing activation through interior light, but maintaining mystery of the process until one enters inside. 

 

The diagonal elements along the building’s perimeter reinforce the winery’s namesake, but also remind the visitor of the vineyard, through its parallel rows of trellises that provided for the grape’s development. The experiential quality of the diagonal façade, slowly becoming cloaked by translucent material, symbolizes the grape’s transformation from singularity to a protected, formulaic outcome.