Basalt Wine, Laposa Winery, Badacsony

Architects: Péter Kis, Bea Molnár
Szöveg: György Szegő
Fotók: Tamás Bujnovszky

Our relationship with wine lies at the very heart of European culture. The mysticism of wine consecrated the location of its production for centuries. In Hungary the sixty years after the World War brought about the crisis of both estate-sized and family-scale of wine-growing. The patinated cellars of the former were replaced with the rigid industrial buildings of the technology producing lower-quality winers in the state sector, whilst the „lovely” week-end cellars of the latter flooded the magnificence of wine regions with masses of low-quality wine.
In the past decade architects have come up with several high-standard cellar wineries with a variety of proportions between the potential constituents of the two mentalities (see MÉ 2005/2 Winery ad architecture, special thematic issue). After consistently analysing the two poles Péter Kis created an architecture disputed by many now but deservedly awarded prestigious prizes. His house is an epoch-making building of winery in its industrial scale.
The design is based on the analogy of the basalt columns and vinestocks grown in the soil of Badacsony. The ramparts of Laposa Winery, its complex and the applied ornamentation intertwine with the deformed surfaces of natural tectonic components and forms radiating energy. In Hungary three types of buildings were built of stone: churches, castles and wine cellars. This work by Péter Kis now uses prefabricated and pierced metal plate facework as the building materials of wineries. Its transparent tracery and patterns drawn by computer adjust to handicraft winemaking and hand-made stone surfaces – however, it also opens towards the contexts of 21st-century architecture. Its gesture correlates with contemporary high tech wine technology replacing handicraft wine-making. The hard-edge character of hardening the forms does not result in the alienating effect as opposed to the folded „bodywork winery” of Steven Holl Loisium-Langlois or the winehouse of Weingut Polz in Grassnitzberg (Austria) with also (even though trivially) transparent „bottle-walled” g2 plus grabsteiner architekten. Tabula rasa was justified there in the 1980s with the exploding scandals of adultering wine: the most modern architecture was meant to break away from tradition and the scandals.
The metal facework of the house by Péter Kis has a design and pattern practicing architectural magic according to which the life force of plants creeping up on the metal wall very soon is a symbol opposed to the human activities jeopardizing the ecological balance of the planet. It warns us that the power of the Earth is much stronger than that of human beings. The appearance of this green message still needs time, as also the completion of the hotel complex of the project in the hillside is delayed: this is yet another sign of the persistence of the investor. Patience should be very central now also for the macro-procedures of this branch of economy as G. Pataky, American politician signed an agreement to support development here for ten years after his visit to this winery so that Hungarian quality wines could break into the international market. By focusing on the tradition of cellars „grown out of the soil” (the underground levels of production are invisible for the visitor approaching the building) the presshouses and outbuildings seated onto the terrain express the topic of Pannonian houses with their archetypal gabled forms. I have also constructed a traditional cellar-presshouse in the vicinity and based on the photos and after touring the location in person I have rushed to a conclusion: enlargening the ancient house type of the Hungarian villages the winery cannot harmonize with its environment and its lovely scales. The visual-tactile relation, however, convinced me that not only the volume of the winery works but also the imposing mass of the hill and its typical, characteristic buildings would require this ancient form in a human scale of enlargement with today’s scale. The scales and dimensions and the appearingly new surfaces, the prefab faceworks precisely suit the function of the industrial units as well. Crept on by greenery, the surfaces are developed as planned and come to be framed by the neighbouring vines, which shall justify the architect’s concept even more convincingly.
The sculpture-like appearance of the location is made authentic by the fine doubled break following the baulks and the gullies. The inner spatial row of the building also follows the horizontal plan defined by the terrain. What is even more, the impression of the ground-floor spaces offers associations relating them to the threefold Hungarian village houses – meaningfully the basic units of modern winemaking replace the row of room-kitchen/porch-pantry. The transparent facework appears in the position of the traditional porch. The visual associations of vernacular architecture is actually evoked by the gable-roof formed as the main motif here. The view of the building is emblematic because of this and the „cellar door” appearing on the gabled elevation. Inside the genious treatment of the level shift reinforces further on the spatial impression the interiors that this technology is a multi-level one with the character of a large industrial unit which synchronized with the chemistry of the transformation from must into wine.
Touring the house we can have an impression of the deeper ancient secrets of this transformation. According to the research by József Zelnik, writer-ethnographer, the vice-president of the Hungarian Wine Academy the metamorphosis of wine is one of the most widespread cultural symbols of rebirth. In one of his studies Zelnik traces the name of Bor Tengri the god from „green”, the greenness (which is red inside if we consider the eye of Osiris) – the magic power appearing at this wavelength as the form and contents of „wine” used in the Hungarian language. In archaic thinking the refinement of must into wine is the metaphor of the transformation of the „sinful” human being into the „pure” son of god. In my interpretation the same holds true of the Laposa basalt wine building in Badacsony: it is also a church. Its sacred space has an altarpiece also for the purist organization of the early modern architecture of the 20th century – derived from the concepts of St. Benedict’s regulations this emptiness helps meditation: the Benedictines prohibited everything in the house which carries vanity and superfluousness. It also has an antenna for today’s viticulture – somewehat contradicting this kind of puritanism – and for its new business sacraments. The prayer-leader winemaking elite, which is much like a caste of priests, however, is not only the advertiser of sacrality proposed by the philos/ethnographer mentioned above. They and the investors form the clients’ circle who do not only repeat the mantras of human beings related to the myths of wine and thus are associated with high-quality architecture, but also operate a complex type of marketing. An important part of this is to work in order to make the venues of wine and food production more marketable. The effects and the use of export and wine tourism complement each other as a result of the work they do. Production and architecture are the common and interrelated components of business success.
These seemingly diverging directions, wine tradition/sacredness/marketing are summarized in an architecture by Péter Kis within one body of building expressing it in a genious form in materials. At first sight the overall impression may be a striking one. However, it has a nice taste: the house embodies aromas of the earth. If it has such an authentic imagination, why should it adjust to the poor world of weekend presshouses and cellars instead of high standards?

Design: Kis Péter Építészműterme Kft.
Leading architects: Kis Péter, Molnár Bea
Fellow architects: Bun Zoltán, Erdélyi Róbert, Hőna Orsolya, Romvári Péter, Varga Anikó
Structure: Markovits Péter vezető tervező – MTM Tanácsadó Mérnökiroda Kft.
Technical installations: Oltvai András, Oltvai Tamás – Oltvai Gépész Stúdió Kft.
Electrical engineering: Sax Dezső – Hochplan Kft.
Wine technology: Kovács András, Lovassy György – Hagyo Kft.
Landscape: Bogner Zsuzsa – Bogner Stúdió
Public utilities: Kádár László – Kádár Komplex Kft.
Environment protection: Weiner László
Client: Bazaltbor-Badacsony Kft.
Main contractor: Market Építő Zrt.