Ixsir Winery

Designed by Raed Abillama Architects

Batroun, Basbina, Lebanon

Photographed in 2017

A living spine of revealed processes and experiences, in strict to the wine making process, debuts from within the existing, resorted, 140 year old house, to flow within the layered functional spaces of the wine factory as a exhibited living wine making body. Integrated within the green thick skin of the Basbina outskirts, in a site that overlooks the northern costal lines from its north-western edges, and the cedar lines from its south eastern stretch, the winery synthesizes an old exciting resorted feudal house with the factory’s modern built structure.

Visitors slowly discover the setting as a minimal intervention on the landscape. In return the sitting of the old house stretches above the winery roof to unify the architectural unravelling. The whole program, the cellar, the vats, the storage stacks, operation and management spaces... are the final of the house, as a main reception, insertion vantage, cascading itself underground, through a “welled” staircase.