BIRCH AKVAVIT DISTILLERY – ICELAND

B I R C H A K V A V I T D I S T I L L E R Y

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I C E L A N D

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Master - Semester II

Muriz Djurdjevic & Titouan Chapouly

Groupe de suivi : Harry Gugger – Aurélie Blanchard

Book Photography : Douglas Mandry

Model Photography: Florian Amoser

Archizoom BestOf Award 2015

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How can an industry reveal the beauty of a landscape ?

Starting from this paradoxal questions, we wanted to raise the question of how an industrial component, or structure, can speak about its surroundings and even, sublime it through a totally artificial construction. Heidegger’s concept of « the bridge that reveals the river and the landscape itself » interested us as metaphore of the project. This concepual image explains how artificial systems can enhance the all-natural physical conditions of a site. With the introduction of a site-specific industry, where potientals of productivity and preservation would meet, a new meaning for a place can be found.

The region of Egilsstaðir, and more specifically the valley of Hallormsstaður with it’s historical forest proposes an ideal terrain for the development of a distillery working closely with a birch tree nursery that would anchor itself on the theme of reforestation. . The existing natural conditions propose multiple types of sites, mainly defined by topography, and a very pragmatic analyse of the needs directs us on this specific natural platform, lying between moutains and the lake. By tackling this region, we touch one of the main ecological issues of contemporary Iceland: the soil erosion fighting by programmes of reforestation

The condition on the site being seemingly undefined with there is a need to create an autonomous system that would create its own context on smaller scale picture.The functionality of lines a tree nursery needs would act as a generator of context, almost urban, and anchor this still ambiguous site with its larger context. As a typical indusrial component, the distillery still lies on the border between technology and tradition.The end product speaks not only about itself but creates a much larger picture reflecting in most cases the image of a whole region.

It brings a new meaning to this ancient and important forest, by using birch trees in a way that the forest still continue to grow, proposing an even stronger vitality. The production of grain alcohol would also on a larger scale, dynamise the existing agricultural industry by highering the demand of barley from all other regions. Instead of being an autistic industry, the distillery acts as a generator of dynamics.

Beacause of the flooding risks of the site, the building sets on pilotis. The project takes the shape of a simple volume, a radical line in the landscape as the expression of the linear production. With this project, we see a potiental for an architecutre defining boundaries of domination, spaces that are colonized for human appropriation without scaring the landscape. This specific phenomena towards urbanity in an all natural landscape reveals the dichotomy between the preserved and the productive, but what if both could actually reveal their opposite ?

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P U B L I C A T I O N S