At the foot of Mount Erice, in a position that allows you to dominate the view of the plain of western Sicily, the Ottoventi winery marks the landscape with an architecture that emerges distinctly, focusing attention. The complex recalls agricultural settlements, the massive and flattened “bagli” with courtyards of Sicilian tradition scattered throughout the territory, and declares itself a contemporary building nucleus, open to a syncretic language, which operates through juxtapositions, stereometric evidence, accentuations in consolidating multiple functions in a set of parts to gradually denote the productive nature of the complex, the aspiration to provide refined and eclectic environments for tastings, internal places and open spaces to host prestigious events. The C-shaped plan is arranged with asymmetrical wings, which enclose a courtyard of significant size and trapezoidal shape, fenced and oriented to the south, towards the landscape of the plain below: overlooking the courtyard, silent and of rugged conformation, on a slight difference in level, are distinct architectural bodies in the composition of the elevations, of comparable height, which house different functions. On the eastern side of the courtyard, the wing of the complex recalls an industrial typology, a pavilion with a gabled roof supported by exposed metal trusses, which a sort of porch raised on a high plinth places in open and evident relief: here, in the double-height internal space of the pavilion, the silvery metal silos for wine production are housed, an imposing and repeated presence, which marks the production space like a sequence of technical object-monuments. The west wing of the courtyard and the middle body, both with flat roofs, involve functional interweavings and compose elevations that can be assimilated to an aspect of an urban nature, in which plastered walls are combined with inserts of regular geometry in exposed sandstone, large openings are proposed, different depths are introduced. The intersection between the two bodies signals a junction: a parallelepiped with unplastered walls, with exposed stone surfaces and high windows, detaches itself from the wings, to contain the stairwell: an element of rarefied tone, which disarticulates and detaches the continuity of the wings in the courtyard. In the same way, as in an urban scenography, the west wing in the courtyard accentuates the entrance to the event hall: the project combines an intermediate space, an excavation in the volume framed by beams and uprights, with the glass access volume. Linking spaces and architectural qualities along the internal paths, superimposing and condensing functional and expressive meanings: the “strong” places of the cellar, as a point of production and reception for the tasting of wine products, summarize the intent to define an active center. The area prepared for aging in barrels, the barrel cellar, becomes a place of visual intensity, a path in the underground level that is expressed in the cobbled floor, in the saturation of sensations. The flooring of the access to the event room is in glass on a regular mesh frame and gives light to the barrel cellar below, with a translucent filter effect, which highlights the grid of the frame in the variable light conditions: symbol of a widespread search for elegance, in the internal spaces, for public use. The tasting room, located on the ground floor between the spaces connected to production (bottling and wine laboratories) and the warehouses, becomes the place for the development of a project of decor and refinement, which contributes to the tone of the furniture, the contrasts that gather on the walls between the dark background and the light geometric fragments, the shiny flooring of reflections, the course of the pebbles at the base of the walls. The architecture of the "Ottoventi" becomes a synthesis between composite elements, the story of a landscape in transformation, of a production, of a research, in contemporaneity. (from https://www.theplan.it/webzine/architettura-italiana/cantina-ottoventi-valderice- edited by Francesco Pagliari

Construction company: FC Costruzioni by Antonino Figuccio