Escala Humana Winery in Gualtallary, Mendoza, is a 450 m2 production building set within the arid foothills of the Andes. Designed by Monte Arquitectura de Autor, RARE Studio Experimental, and Unamuno Arquitectura, the project organizes winemaking, storage, and gathering spaces through a low stone volume capped by a dark metal roof, mediating between the scale of the Uco Valley landscape and the tactile requirements of daily work.
Escala Humana Winery Technical Information
- ArchitectsMonte Arquitectura de Autor + RARE Studio Experimental + Unamuno Arquitectura
- LocationGualtallary, Tupungato, Mendoza, Argentina
- Gross Area450 m2 | 4,844 Sq. Ft.
- Project Years2024
- Photographs© Luis Abba
A thin line between heaven and earth defines the project’s premise. The horizontal element organizes the program and provides a reference point from which to measure and understand the immeasurable.
– Monte Arquitectura de Autor, RARE Studio Experimental, and Unamuno Arquitectura
Landscape Placement and Ecological Grounding
The winery occupies a precise position within the high desert of Gualtallary, where viticulture meets a fragile system of native vegetation, mineral soils, and mountain hydrology. Rather than treating the site as a neutral agricultural field, the design begins with a reading of its ecological irregularities. The building is placed on the least cultivable portion of the land, allowing productive vineyard areas to remain interwoven with existing islands of chanar trees, cacti, and arid scrubland.
This siting gives the project a restrained territorial presence. From a distance, the winery reads as a long, low line set against the Uco Valley and the Andes, its horizontal profile resisting the temptation to compete with the mountain range. The architecture works as a datum in a landscape defined by extreme vertical and spatial magnitudes, offering a scale through which the broader terrain can be perceived.
Access to the building reinforces this relationship between cultivation and desert ecology. The approach passes through vineyard rows that appear embedded rather than imposed, while views are calibrated so that the mountains are alternately withheld and revealed. The desert is not reduced to scenery; it structures orientation, material choice, and the spatial rhythm between enclosure and exposure.
Mass, Roof, and Material Contrast
The building is organized through a clear tectonic opposition: a heavy stone base rising from the ground and a lightweight metal roof resting above it. The stone walls establish continuity with the mineral character of the site, using mass not only as image but as environmental and spatial infrastructure. Their rough surface gives the winery a geological quality, as if the building had been assembled from the terrain it occupies.
Above this stereotomic base, the dark gabled roof introduces a different register. Its precise metal surface recalls agricultural sheds and infrastructural buildings, yet its proportion and ridge clerestory give the volume a disciplined formal clarity. The roof does not dissolve into the landscape; it marks the building as an instrument of production while maintaining a low silhouette against the valley.
The resulting composition moves between several architectural types without fully belonging to any of them. It has the protected depth of a cave, the pitched section of a barn, and the measured domesticity of a rural house. This ambiguity is central to the project, since the winery is asked to accommodate both industrial processes and intimate forms of occupation.
Interior Organization and Productive Space
The main fermentation hall is the spatial and operational center of the project. Concrete amphorae and cylindrical tanks are arranged along a clear central axis, producing a room where circulation, monitoring, and production remain legible. The pitched roof, exposed steel trusses, timber elements, and polished concrete floor frame the equipment not as isolated machinery but as part of an ordered interior landscape.
The plan concentrates services in the east wing, including restrooms, laboratory, storage, and machine spaces. This decision leaves the central hall open for the changing demands of harvest, fermentation, bottling, and aging. To the south, a semi-underground barrel cellar uses a lower, denser spatial condition, with board-formed concrete, timber overhead, and stacked barrels defining a more compressed sequence of work and storage.
Large thresholds give the productive interior a broader spatial resonance. When the central doors are open, the hall aligns with the vineyard and the Andes beyond, transforming a technical room into a framed observatory of its territory. The mezzanine office extends this reading vertically, allowing the production floor to be seen from above as both workplace and interior courtyard, where industrial activity acquires a domestic scale.
Climate, Light, and Atmospheric Control
The environmental strategy relies on architectural means rather than excessive mechanical expression. Thick stone walls provide thermal inertia, moderating temperature shifts in a region marked by strong solar exposure and daily climatic variation. Controlled openings, cross ventilation, and shaded edges contribute to a stable microclimate suited to both labor and the thermal demands of winemaking.
Light enters the fermentation hall through a continuous ridge clerestory that runs along the roof peak. This device brings daylight into the depth of the plan while limiting glare and direct heat gain. The result is a soft, even illumination that emphasizes the texture of stone, concrete, timber, and metal without compromising the functional requirements of the winery.
Exterior transitional spaces extend this climatic logic. Reed pergolas, vine-covered eaves, and narrow shaded walkways temper the boundary between interior production and open landscape. These elements are modest in construction but significant in performance, creating zones for pause, maintenance, and observation where the building negotiates the desert sun rather than sealing itself away from it.
About Monte Arquitectura de Autor, RARE Studio Experimental, and Unamuno Arquitectura
Monte Arquitectura de Autor is based in Mendoza, while RARE Studio Experimental and Unamuno Arquitectura are based in Cordoba, Argentina. Their collaboration on Escala Humana Wines Winery follows a site-specific architectural approach, integrating local stone, a lightweight metal roof, bioclimatic strategies, and flexible spaces for winemaking and gathering within the Andean landscape.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Authors and design team: Fabrizio Prosperi, Agustin Willnecker, Ivan Ferrero, and Mateo Unamuno
- Photographer: Luis Abba
- Suppliers: Tupuncret, Lechu, Himan, Maderas Misionero, La Alianza, Vodem, KG Electricidad, Friolatina, Pintureria Tous, Ariel Moreyra, and Uco Servicios.
