Steven Holl: World of Wine: Loisium

A few years ago, on the edge of Langenlois, Austria, in the midst of rolling vineyards, three neighboring families faced a puzzle: recent technology had made their extensive cellars, some up to 900 years old, obsolete for wine production. What to do with the space? This unique meeting of traditional viniculture, ancient building technology and contemporary architecture and scholarship was the answer. It comprises a flagship entrance hall, multimedia exhibits on wine production throughout the now-linked cellars, and a hotel and art garden. Both the hotel and the slightly tilted cube of the welcome hall--it lists five degrees to the south, pulling, as the vines do, towards the sun--were designed by the acclaimed American architect Steven Holl, who was inspired by the geometry of the subterranean cellars. World of Wine Loisium is an absorbing document of the four-part project. It includes essays about the region, a collection of Holl's own views of the project (he is, as well as an architect, a widely published writer on architecture), and essays about the global phenomena of star architects and the developers who commission their work, putting the project into a larger perspective.