With its red bricks and geometric Art Deco lines, the building, renovated by RKD Architects, cuts an imposing figure and is a distinctive landmark on the city’s skyline. Guinness owner Diageo has now revived the name for its Roe & Co whiskey and has turned the brewery’s former power station into a distillery, at the heart of an urban regeneration project for The Liberties district. Back in the 19th century, George Roe was at the heart of Irish whiskey’s golden age, with his distillery – one the largest in Ireland – covering 17 acres on Dublin’s Thomas Street. Yet beer isn’t the only drink to call the city home. Think Dublin, think Guinness, the distinctive stout that’s become synonymous with Ireland’s capital. Split into five ‘cells’, each housing a different step in the production process, the site will not only allow The Macallan to increase production by a third but also creates a natural flow for tours from its visitors’ centre. Lead architect Graham Stirk drew on historic plans for the estate – the brand’s home since 1824 – dating back to the early 18th century as inspiration for the project. The distillery is cut into the hillside, with its undulating grass roof hailed as one of the most-complicated timber structures in the world, consisting of 1,800 single beams, 2,500 different roof elements, and 380,000 individual components, almost none of which are identical in shape or size. Part of the brief for architects Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners – the brains behind projects including the 3 World Trade Center building in New York, Terminal 5 at Heathrow airport in London, and the Leadenhall or ‘cheese-grater’ tower in the UK capital – was for the £140 million distillery to blend into the landscape.
Blink and you’ll miss it as you approach the site from nearby Craigellachie. What’s most impressive about the design of The Macallan’s distillery on the Easter Elchies estate in Speyside, Scotland, is its invisibility.
Wild bevy distilling windows#
Whether it’s Speyside glimpsed from the windows of Glenrinnes, Islay from Ardnahoe or Skye from Raasay, magic can happen when a distillery celebrates its surrounding landscape. Recovering heat from the stills and turning waste materials into cattle feed or fuel are becoming more and more common.Īnd then there’s the view. Environmental factors are also a key consideration, with renewable energy and sustainable building materials now featuring prominently in design briefs. Visitor numbers at Scotch whisky distilleries broke through the two million mark for the first time in 2018, highlighting the importance of creating an experience that stands out from the crowd. Turning distilleries into must-visit destinations is an important step for tourism too – as current travel restrictions start to lift in the not-too-distant future. Whether it’s building a site from the ground up or revamping an older facility, the right architecture can elevate a project into the limelight. Drinks makers are hiring the best architects to design their distilleries, bringing grandeur and romance to what is essentially a spirits factory.
But designing for a distillery is an entirely different matter. Making spirits is one thing you find your raw material, turn it into alcohol, age it if necessary, then bottle it and release it to the world.
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