The Rudd Caves, in addition to being the main storage facility for the winery, also serve as the primary hospitality space for wine tasting and banquets. To facilitate this function we designed a banquet hall, public bathrooms, and a wine library. In the cave construction we encouraged a crude, almost random profile that recalled more the shape of the rock excavation rather than a uniform shotcrete form. We then contrasted that rustic quality with simple, elegantly modernist forms and materials. Plate glass and steel were laser cut to follow the profile of the cave walls. Two enormous slabs of redwood (from a fallen tree in the national forest) 20 feet long by 4 feet wide, are the banquet tables, supported on simple fins of steel rising out of the cave floor. In the bathrooms concrete was poured in polished formwork to form elegantly reflective surfaces that contrast wonderfully with the national rough texture of the cave walls.
Wine making is inherently a process full of duality and opposites: The refined chemistry and sanitary stainless steel of a modern winery versus the dirty, somewhat random nature of farming and the magic of aging in wood. Science and art, old and new, rough and smooth, process and magic - all are part of making great wine. These contrasts became the inspiration for our design expression, resulting in a cave that references both ancient and modern.
Client: Leslie Rudd
Project Lead: Kathy Hancox
Contractor: Rudd Estate (Ron Valencia)
Published:
San Francisco Examiner Magazine, April 16 2000
