far workshop revives chinese countryside lodge as wine cellar

Shanghai-based Far Workshop has transformed an historic lot of land in China’s countryside and its underground and overground into a wine cellar. Prior to the renovation, the site’s underground concrete vault was originally used for grain storage, meanwhile the traditional lodge was left abandoned for years.

Now, the vault sits as a wine cellar including a space for tasting, and the lodge serves as welcoming entrance to receive guests. Both spaces are united by an atmosphere that fuses a modern ambience with the site’s quality of a ‘relic’ to be preserved. Further, the design team has re-landscaped the site to restore its natural qualities, extending the structure with a canopy and rows of textured black concrete columns that create dynamic viewpoints and echo the woodlands beyond.

a revival and extension of an abandoned lodge | all images © Far Workshop

The Chinese wine cellar blends into its engulfing countryside environment with the integration of rustic columns that form the dominant visual language of the project. Defining both the entrance to the wine cellar and the boundary of the land, the concrete elements lend a sculptural presence, while standing in dialogue with the natural landscape and the adjacent structure’s plastered facade.

Interdisciplinary design firm Far Workshop has diverged from the standard industrialized concrete column expressions which are often reminiscent of stones. Instead, the team uses a black and rough, abstracted finish in a unique expression that tones down such representation and balances over the figurative image. Embracing craftsmanship of casted forms, the columns express their raw materiality, and cracks, holes, and uneven surfaces are left untreated to adorn the surfaces. In doing so, each of the casted columns maintain individuality from one another despite expressing the same formwork.

the canopy extends out from the original building, echoing its form

Far Workshop transforms abandoned land and its structural remnants into a wine cellar