-
Architects: Bricolo Falsarella
- Area: 1750 m²
- Year: 2021
-
Photographs:Atelier XYZ
-
Lead Architects: Filippo Bricolo
Text description provided by the architects. The strong growth of wine tourism in Italy has led to the need for historic wineries to expand their wine tasting areas. This new impetus has also been very strong in the Custoza area, which over time has become an essential destination for tourists and visitors seeking places where they can fully experience the combination of wine and landscape. Among these virtuous places, a special mention is deserved by the Cantina Gorgo and its 53 hectares of organic vineyards that wind through the gentle hills of the morainic hills of Lake Garda around the built-up area of Custoza.
To meet these new demands, the owners turned to our studio not to design a new enclosed space, but rather to create an open space where clients could taste their wines while at the same time experiencing the unique environmental setting, in the wake of the great tradition of historic Italian gardens. Taking our cue from the vernacular heritage of the area, we proposed a reinterpretation of the rural typology of the Brolo, a model of hybrid space between interior and exterior that has persisted for centuries in the Veneto countryside.
The new Brolo adds to the range of spaces dedicated to hospitality already created by our studio around the main courtyard from 2005 to 2016 (wine shop, tasting rooms, barrique cellar). Unlike these enclosed spaces, the new Brolo is developed in the rear part of the courtyard (in keeping with local tradition) and looks like an elongated rectangular room with an open sky, closed on the sides to form a large central void. The large void is the physical, architectural, and symbolic pivot of the project. In this space, visitors can meet and linger contemplating the landscape through wings, hints, and frames and actively participating in the beauty of the place.
As in many of our works, the materials used have rough surfaces (rough-hewn stone, fair-faced reinforced concrete, brushed wood, rusty iron) to relate expressively to the sunlight, bringing forward the raw authenticity typical of vernacular buildings of the area. This choice constitutes a precise stance and introduces a strong humanization into the project, which is still deeply connected with the place. The architecture is set in its context, seeking a new encounter with the roots of the rural world and a mature and more conscious relationship with nature.
Compared to contemporary life, which is increasingly fast-paced and superficial, the Brolo of the Cantina Gorgo offers visitors a calibrated microcosm where they can rediscover the slowness of their gaze and live a complete, activating experience. The idea behind it is a new journey through Italy that is not nostalgia for something lost, but the search for a sort of cultural anabiosis of the Bel paese. The project also hides the ambition of a new Italian architecture, which could refound the vernacular, freeing it from the picturesque, thanks to a modern expression that is strongly contemporary but also timeless and in continuity with the architecture of our nation.
