Antinori Winery, Florence: Martini

As one of the most celebrated wineries in Italy, the owners of the Antinori Estate seeked to enhance their surrounding landscape as an expression of the cultural and social importance of the place where their wine is produced. Martini Light worked closely with the project team from Archea Associates of Florence to devise a scheme and luminaire selection which was sympathetic to the natural materials used whilst reinforcing the volumous spaces within.

The site is surrounded by the unique hills of Chianti, covered with vineyards, half-way between Florence and Siena. The purpose of the project was to merge the building and the rural landscape; the industrial complex appears to be a part of the latter thanks to the roof, which has been turned into a plot of farmland cultivated with vines, interrupted, along the contour lines, by two horizontal cuts which let light into the interior and provide those inside the building with a view of the landscape through the imaginary construction of a diorama. The façade, to use an expression typical of buildings, therefore extends horizontally along the natural slope, paced by the rows of vines which, along with the earth, form its “roof cover”. The openings or cuts discreetly reveal the underground interior: offices and areas where the wine is produced are arranged along the lower, and the bottling and storage areas along the upper. The secluded heart of the winery where the wine matures in barrels, with sequenced terracotta vaults, guarantees the ideal thermo-hygrometric conditions for the slow maturing of the product.

The architectural section of the building reveals that the structure follows both the production process of the grapes which descend (as if by gravity) – from the point of arrival, to the fermentation tanks to the underground barrel vault – and that of the visitors who on the contrary ascend from the parking area to the winery and the vineyards, through the production and display areas with the press, the area where vinsanto is aged, to finally reach the restaurant and the floor hosting the auditorium, the museum, the library, the wine tasting areas and the sales outlet.

The offices, the administrative areas and executive offices, located on the upper level, are paced by a sequence of internal courts illuminated by circular holes scattered across the vineyard-roof. The materials and technologies evoke the local tradition of simplicity, both in the use of terracotta and in the use of energy produced naturally by the earth to cool and insulate the winery, creating the ideal climatic conditions for the production of wine.