The client, a family-run business, owns an old olive oil mill. A family-run business: genuine people, knowledge passed down from generation to generation, and a desire to share it. This gave rise to the need for a place to welcome travellers and introduce them to the products that reflect their history and their local area.
The house in the olive grove represents the past and the future of a family whose values, history and culture are rooted in the land and its precious fruit, olive oil. We sought to distinguish the property’s two main activities in various ways: hospitality and the convivial experience. For the former, we envisaged wooden structures in the upper section, whose shape would evoke both a house and a mill at the same time. For the latter, we sought to create spaces beneath these volumes by excavating the ground, organised into stone terraces. In this way, the residential function – albeit temporary – aligns with the idea of a sheltered, warm and welcoming home, immersed in its surroundings and firmly anchored to the ground. All other social, convivial and tasting activities take place beneath the houses, in almost vernacular spaces carved out of the terraces, both for functional reasons (to regulate the temperature of the produce) and to make the experience even more immersive. The contrast between light and shadow, the balance between the different materials, and the use of stone and wood draw the visitor into an introspective and sacred dimension. The houses are arranged in a seemingly random manner, much like the rural or spontaneously built structures found in the surrounding area.
Our concept, therefore, is to bring a small piece of the landscape onto our site – specifically, a landscape of terraced olive groves – where human hands work alongside nature in perfect harmony to create a product steeped in history and tradition: olive oil.
The terraces allow us to make the best use of our site’s boundaries and topography, integrating the necessary spaces in an organic and functional way and orienting the views from the houses towards the landscape. The view of the landscape is one of the most important assets to be highlighted in the project, so much so that it has led us to position the heart of the tasting room along the best line of sight.