Wine and architecture: the international competition for Young people

The Valpolicella Negrar Winery has launched a competition to make you revisit the current seat of the company.

The young students of architecture are called to rethink the winery for the creation of a Wine Culture Center.



Valpolicella Negrar has launched an international competition for young people. The aim is to renovate the historic Wine cellar and to turn it into a cultural center dedicated to wine.

Who is the Valpolicella Negrar Winery?

The winery has been offering wines for over eighty years, the fruit of ancient knowledge, skills and innovation in winemaking. Excellent are the business results: as well as 23% of turnover in 2013.

Why this competition?

The Valpolicella Negrar Winery has decided to renovate the existing points of winemaking and to invest in an ambitious architectural project of immediate feasibility that intends to respond to new business needs and to reflect the quality of its wines. Enhancing the creativity and talent of young people. «To do this, the Valpolicella Negrar Winery has decided to focus on young people and to support YAC (Young Architects Competition), a global network promoting architecture and design competitions aimed at young designers, graduates and students», Carlo Alberto Recchia, chairman of the Cooperative, says. «So – Recchia continues – the Winery has entrusted YAC the organization of an international competition called Wine Culture Centre, to transform the current home of Negrar, dating back to 1957, in a place that aspires to reformulate, in a contemporary way, the concept of winery: from a simple factory to a center of art production and research, to a place of encounter and relationship with its environment and territory, catalyst of culture and tourism».

The project

A building–manifesto of the culture of wine. In compliance with the regulatory constraints that protect the precious land and with a policy of sustainable energy, YAC was asked to design the roof, the warehouse and the loft as well as to restructure the current path of visit, imagining the spaces unused in a certain period of the year, such as drying rooms, for the organization of associative moments and cultural events.

When

Registration is open on the site www.youngarchitectscompetitions.com/en/registration.html and ends on June 30th 2014. On August 4th the results will be published and on September 20th there will be the awards ceremony with the opening of the exhibition of the projects.

The Jury

Nicola Scaranaro (Foster&Partners, London), Fiorenzo Valbonesi (ASV3, Cesena), Antonio Ravalli (Ferrara), Markus Scherer (Merano), Alfonso Femia (5+1AA, Genoa)

Awards

The total amount is expected to be 15 thousand € (€ 8,000 first prize, € 4,000 second prize, € 2,000 third prize). There are also two "Gold" Honorable Mentions of € 500 each, and a further ten Honorable Mentions. All the winning projects will be published on YAC and other websites and formats of architecture, as well as being exposed during events of national and international architecture.