Architects award the Gorgo di Custoza

Between architecture and landscape, with a strong connection to Italian cultural roots and the challenge to offer more of an experience than a service. It is in Veneto, in Custoza, to complete a 55-hectare organic vineyard, the winery that won "The Wine Architecture Medal", an award conceived by the Order of Architects of Treviso, in agreement with the Municipality of Valdobbiadene, and aimed at identifying the best project to enhance DOCG, DOC, IGT territories on a national scale.

This is the brolo (a rural type of empty, open-air space enclosed by walls, mediating between the internal garden and the countryside) of the Gorgo Winery signed by Studio Bricolo Falsarella. Reflection on the relationship between places of wine and the infrastructures that contribute to organising and defining its landscapes in a sustainable way has rewarded the work, which architect Filippo Bricolo contextualises by citing "the strong increase in wine tourism in Italy, which has led to the need for historic wine cellars to extend and update the spaces dedicated to hospitality. This thrust is also very strong in the Verona area, which has now become a destination for tourists and visitors in search of places where they can fully experience the combination of the quality of wine and the beauty of the landscape of the moraine hills of Lake Garda".

The property had approached the architects, Bricolo goes on to explain, "not so much to design an enclosed space, but to create an open space where the wines could be tasted while experiencing the uniqueness of the environmental setting, as has always been the case in the great tradition of Italian gardens". Bricolo then adds that, taking inspiration from the vernacular heritage of the area, a reinterpretation of the rural typology of the brolo was proposed. The new space is in fact an addition to the cellar areas that the studio has already created in consecutive additions (wine-shop, tasting rooms, barrique cellar) since 2005. A project for a winery born with the idea of giving a face to the wines produced by the company.

"Doing wine architecture - according to Bricolo's interpretation - means not superimposing iconic signs or buildings that focus only on the technical performance part, but determining a sort of cultural continuity with wine and its relationship with the territory". For Bricolo, "The transformation of wine cellars from places of production to spaces dedicated to the reception and immersive experience of visitors is one of the major driving forces behind territorial marketing in many areas of Italy.