Minimal Intervention

Minimal Intervention wine making aims to capture the terroir of place, reflecting climate, geography, topography, soils and tradition in the wine’s flavour. But what version of site do we seek to capture? By whom and for whom? And through which cultural perspective is it to be perceived?

For this studio, the notion of minimal intervention will be explored through three key lenses. The lenses will be adopted for the design of a vineyard and winery on an existing farm in the Victorian Alpine Region, at the foot of Mount Buffalo. The lenses:

1. Minimal Intervention wine making,
2. Minimalism & Land Art,
3. A minimal approach to the architectural intervention.

The studio project will address a complex programmatic brief of growing, making, bottling, aging, storing, tasting, selling, serving, and drinking. Propositions will negotiate systems, structures, and spaces for both production and public facing activities. The semester structure will follow to parts: making (landscape) and growing (instruments and interventions)

Wine MakingThis studio explores minimal intervention, natural, and low-fi wine making. These methods adopt agroecological techniques to viticulture, with the aim to add and subtract as little as possible during the making process to reflect the nuanced characteristics of site in the wine. How might these ideas and attitudes be applied to the discipline of architecture? And how can the architectural proposition sup- port and facilitate this ambition?

ArtThis studio draws on the work of Land Art and the wider conceptual art movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Students will research tools, techniques, and approaches of selected precedents to inform their architectural language. Event, action and performance will be used as a generative practice and method for examining site.

Architectural InterventionPropositions will emerge from listening closely (walking site, observation, GIS, mapping etc) capturing atmosphere, geology, topography, flora and fauna as architectural material. The architectural response will manifest through these observations, choreographing dynamic site conditions in dialogue with the technical requirements of winery processes and structures.

Architectural devices (wall, floor, roof, window, stairs, ramp, etc) will be utilised to frame, register, and measure the changing site while providing shade, shelter, and weather protection for the grapes, equipment, and inhabitants. A bare-minimum approach will be taken to generate a broad range of spatial conditions.

SiteThe farm site is located in Buckland and hosts a live project by Collective Territories. The area has a layered and contested history. Land of the Taungurung people, once home to native flora and fauna is now occupied by exotic plants, pine plantations and livestock. It’s surface and subsurface has been subjected to disruptive extraction for gold and minerals. Students will be encouraged to engage with this rich, yet complex history and and living culture.