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Terroir:n. Origin French terre: land. French winemakers developed the concept of terroir as a way to describe the unique aspects of microclimates which in! uence and shape the wine made from it. " e microclimates are a combination of conditions including climate, time, and space of a given vineyard. In this sense Terroir has spatial and even architectural implications. It is an evolving context, subject to human intervention and to the vicissitudes of nature in a larger sense, however terroir is typically understood in a ‘natural’ rural setting. How might this change in an urban setting?Another way to ask that question; how might we begin to understand or reinterpret the implications of a productive green roofscape in an urban setting? For this project the main implication is a way to suggest a community by collecting and connecting people and systems and the speci# c productive scape that is being tested in a vineyard. " e project proposes an urban winery which begs for a design that can rethink the organization of traditional winery components and readjust them to take over the urban grid. In an increasingly urbanizing world it becomes intuitive and prudent to critique the programs of the rural setting and question its ability to thrive in the urban fabric. " is question has already

been tested many times in attempts to begin urban farming. In Minneapolis speci# cally the Urban Agriculture Policy Plan opens the door for farmers to use land for commercial farms. It also recommends incorporating urban agriculture into the city’s long-range planning e$ orts. " e state of Minnesota now has three zoning ordinances speci# cally for Urban Agriculture. " ese are innovative ways to bring a traditionally rural program into the urban setting which catalyze new and unexpected repercussions such as co-ops or farmers markets on a busy street. To question the rural program of winemaking in a Minnesotan city center seems relevant as Minnesota and Wisconsin have seen a recent growth in wineries with the University of Minnesota engineering more resilient grape strands. If placed downtown Minneapolis the grapes could continue to be researched by school of Horticulture, involving the public in this intricate process of winemaking and rigorous study of grape research which has not yet been exposed in such a manner. " is project also becomes relevant as a way to explore the integration of rural and urban systems creating unprecedented programmatic and systemic opportunities. " e systems that will be incorporated include wine production, research, parking, gray water recycling, energy banking, shading, and transportation of people and goods. " e winery is the overarching program and

URBAN TERROIR:

Systemically integrating # eld and factory of winemaking in the city fabric (downtown Minneapolis)

Elise Hansen

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THE FACILITY: By having a vineyard in the city, it also presents an opportunity to incorporate a research facility for the University of Minnesota School of Horticulture. " e winery and research facility buildings are located on the current LRT stop in front of the metrodome site which would become the epicenter of the wine district. " ey act as two larger “collectors” of the entire # eld system. " ey funnel the grapes for processing and reciprocate with an outpour of public access. It is a point where public, process and landscape braid for a unique urban experience." e public spaces in the facilities include a roo% op restaurant above the research facility and a speakeasy like bar in the basement of the Winery. " ey are connected vertically by glass elevators, allowing glimpses of the vertical processes. At the main level the public space widens to allow the program for the LRT stop. Just above that, a bike path coming from the LRT stop to the pedestrian bridge at the river, cuts through the facilities to reach the elevated path in the vines while also allowing glimpses of both facilities inside.

" e grapes have another designated experience. " ey start as seedlings in the research facility’s green house for a year and a half, and then are shipped out to be grown in the containers. Once harvested, the full crates are sent to the main conveyor belt which parallels the bike path to enter both facilities. " e crates then drop down the lab ‘collector’ as grapes to be researched in the lab or continue across to be dropped down the processing facility ‘collector’ as wine. " ese collectors also parallel the vertical public elevators. " e people and the grapes are always moving parallel. " e idea is that through the scattering and tangling of program, the winery and the research lab, the restaurants and the light rail, the vineyard systems and the public can all co-exist with varying degrees of experience, transparency and connectivity.

Above: Section of Process in facilities

Below: Cellar Restaurant below LRT

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infrastructure encompassing these other agents at play. “We presently face large global problems that are too di& cult for individuals operating autonomously to solve. We need to see renewed exchange and collaboration between dispersed networks, systems, and people if we are to make more informed, e$ ective decisions and actions.”

Creating an architecture as a multi-agent system doesn’t have to solve global issues but it can start to evoke change by creating new opportunities on a spectrum of scales. By creating a winery that works with larger scale systems of the city, it may not solve a water crisis or housing issues, but it can start by serving as an interface, as a social machine, where the exchange of knowledge and ideas start to take place.

“A multi-agent system (architecture) is a system composed of multiple interacting intelligent agents (programs, organizations, peoples). Multi-agent systems can be used to solve problems that are di& cult or impossible for an individual agent to solve (global scale problems of food, water, etc).”

" e winery and vineyard system will be a ground for experimentation as the density and diversity of functions build new connections and new relationships much like the multi-faceted nature of society. A third reason to test a vineyard is in the plants architectural form. Its growth itself can be volumetric. It can be shaped, molded, and tamed. Even the rigorous production process from seedling to wine bottle evolves into such a variety of forms.

Above: Processing Diagram of Wine making

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PROGRAM SCALE:Wineries exist because of the value for variety and for all wine’s subtle nuances. For this reason, the process of winemaking can vary in many ways but the essentials # ve steps that every grape must go through to become wine include: harvesting, crushing, fermenting, clarifying, and aging. " e gradation of changes within those steps all depend on the vintner and her preference and tradition of the wine. " e beauty of winemaking is in the ebb and ! ow of the process from monthly, daily to hourly changes that take place. Even the harvesting is preferred in the perfect crisp and damp morning hours of a fall day. Since the vineyard will be in the city, these diagrams represent three sizes of vineyards on the Minneapolis city block scale. A home grower with 300 sq % of growing space can make 25 bottles annually. Northern Vineyards takes up about 14 city blocks (almost 40 acres) and produces over 80k bottles a year with 35 working employees; an appropriate scale for Minneapolis. Mondavi winery would take up over 3 Minneapolis city centers of # elds to produce over 5 million bottles and have 400 working hands; quite impressive, yet too grand for our metropolis.

SITE:A% er rigorous study of the wine process itself and its potential scale, I have come to understand the nuances involved and how those programs interlaced with winemaking may be thought of in a city setting; traditions and diurnal/seasonal rituals, harvest festivals, the involvement and embracing of public, the possibility for job opportunities, sense of community with working-scapes and sense of leisure with picturesque-scapes. All of these can create an identity or culture where one might be lacking. " e site became grounded in the city of Minneapolis’s 2025 plan for redevelopment of the Eastern Minneapolis parking lots into residential developments. It is a site that currently has an absence of identity and also has enough space to catalyze a wine community " ese vast blocks of surface parking sprinkled with a mix of low and high income housing with a few zones of commercial has great opportunity to become a community but right now lacks the identity holding the eclectic mixture together. " is project also follows the 2030 plan proposing that the Vikings Stadium be removed, creating a need to reintegrate those Metrodome blocks back into the city fabric.

Above: Vineyard space requirements on a city block Above: Site plan without metrodome

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CONSTRAINTS:Setting the scale of the program is one decision but this grand project needs more constraints in order to successfully test a variety of systems working together. Exploring ways to rethink this rural process in an urban setting, it made sense to break up the components of the winery; the process facility and the picturesque vineyard. When it was rearranged and placed on the urban grid the picturesque working scape began to take over a datum above street level and a horizontal winery turned vertical to occupy a city block. I began by critiquing the traditional horizontal process and looking at vertical processing facilities of existing wineries and other factories to better understand spatial requirements of equipment and a gravity powered process.

Traditionally set in the rolling hills of a picturesque landscape, vineyards have a preconceived image of a pastoral and still environment where the passage of time is as gradual and e$ ortless as the ripening of the grape. " is image however is somewhat hyper-natural. It is a cultivated landscape forced into precise rows of unnatural order, row a% er row of strategically placed vines for the maximum yield of crop. " e rural winery itself where the crop is harvested and processed has traditionally compensated the vast open space. Before renovations, the Robert Mondavi Winery was a good example of the traditional rural-horizontal winery. " e sprawling ! oor plan set on the edge of its multiple acres looked out over its crop as royalty overlooks its kingdom. " e open space allowed for the wine process to occur on the main level with only barrels in the basement for aging. However, the disadvantage is the added energy of pumps and manual labor to carefully move the wine without agitating unwanted tannic acids.

" is is an interesting concept if we understand that wine is a completely natural process. If Mother Nature provides everything that is needed to make wine, why does the traditional horizontal process require additional labor? Is there a better process and does it require the same setting?

In 1995, An Austrian Vintner by the name of Gernot Heinrich proposed a pump-free process and in 2001 a winery was built by stacking the programs into the side of a hill and allowing gravity to move the process naturally. Grapes could be dropped o$ at the top of the hill and wine can be picked up at the bottom. While this process worked well and is continuing to gain popularity among vintners worldwide, it has only been tested in the rural setting with the grapes on site.

" e last winery precedent is more local. It is the Northern Vineyards in Stillwater Minnesota. It represents a somewhat urban and vertical winery. However, the grapes are not grown on site they are delivered from 11 di$ erent co-op vineyards. Because of that, they still need pumps to send the grapes from the main level up to the fermentation tanks on the second level and back down to bottle. I believe in order to be a truly urban winery it should grow its vines on site.

" ese precedents constrained my project to begin conceptually as a set of # elds elevated above street level, soaking up the sun followed by a vertical ! ow of grapes into a partially sunken facility for the maturing of wine underground.

Above: Early conceptual sketch

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Above: Stellenbosch, South Africa. The traditional image of vineyards Above: diagrams of process layout for Mondavi winery, Heinrich

Weingut, and Northern Vineyards Winery from top to bottom.

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Above:modular containers as plan above parkingAbove: harvest as containers above parking

THE MODULE:Beginning with just the constraint of the elevated # eld, the infrastructure of the containers which hold the vines could be implemented right now above the existing surface parking. Once deployed, the containers would act as a land bank for future residential developments of the 2025 plan, a shading device in the summer, snow mitigation in the winter, and also they would give back to the parking spots that were taken away with energy production. " e size of the containers takes into account speci# c requirements. " e dimensions are no longer restrained to the rural constraints of oxen, tractors, or plows but now they are set in urban girds. One size requirement is the vine pot which needs to be at least 4’x4’ by 2’ deep. " e second size requirement is to make sure parking can be spaced appropriately below the infrastructure, and third is the row of pots once staked should be able to # t on the bed of a truck for ease of construction and redevelopment. With these sizes the module of the container becomes 33’x66’ holding eight rows of vines and eight rows of access paths. Each module needs crates to carry grapes during harvest. " e size of existing crates used in California today is 24x14x 11 inches tall and are designed to hold 42 pounds of grapes and still be easily li% ed. In the modules however, instead of being carried by hand,

they will operate on a conveyor belt system for the purpose of crossing streets and multiple elevations without having to touch the street level before reaching the winery.A # eld of container modules will also have an appropriate amount of collectors as well. Collectors act as vertical access points for the workers to reach the new harvest datum but also store the crates during o$ season, collect the gray water for recycling, collect energy for the cars below, and collect light as a light sha% below the modules; hence their name. " ey are spaced appropriately between rows for the # lling of six crates. " ree crates can be # lled and stacked easily and one person could push two stacks of crates. A% er six crates are # lled they can be shipped o$ to the main conveyor belt that goes to the winery and six new crates will be taken from the next collector.

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Above: size of vine container and volumetric of harvest datum

Below: container section

Above: Collector diagram

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Above: Public vs. harvest diagrams in plan Above: site plan, street plan and cellar plan

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THE FIELD:In the larger # eld these systems work together at multiple scales. Like the elevators in the building, the collectors in the # eld also act as vertical access and anchor points for the horizontal bridges that move the bikes or the conveyor belts that move the grapes across the main streets of east Minneapolis." e connectors that have both bike path and crate path like the bridge in the building are permanent connectors and remain at the same height so there is always an elevated bike path from the light rail to the pedestrian bridge at the river. " en there are temporary connectors just for harvest. " ey are able to be drawn out and pop up for the fall- winter harvest and retracted during o$ season. From below, the pedestrians and drivers would know when harvest is taking place. " e connectors also have the ! exibility for future development to have a vertical element. So these systems of collectors and connectors create unique access points across streets and into the new landscape above ground level. " e term landscape is very important as it is so loaded in its entomology. Once we understand its derivative, we may have a di$ erent attitude towards landscape and the term itself.

Both JB Jackon and John Stilgoe have documented the complexity of the term landscape. " ey describe the Old German landscha% as actually preceding landskip and as referring not to scenery but to the environment of a working community, a setting comprising dwellings, pastures, meadows, and # elds, and surrounded by unimproved forest or meadow. In other words, the meaning of landscha% comprises a deep and intimate mode of relationship not only among buildings and # elds but also among patterns of occupation, activity, and space, each o% en bound into calendrical time. In this sense, landscha% is related to the German gemeinscha% , which refers to those forms and ideas - James Corner (Eidetic Operations)

" is is interesting for me to think about landscape transforming into a more social and spatial meaning than purely an image of the measured environment. By shi% ing the datum, the # elds no longer become modular but they connect to become a landscape; a working, social and spatial landscape.

Above: temporary connectors during harvest

Below: the hollistic fi eld diagram

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Selected Bibliography

Corner, James. Eidetic Operations and New Landscapes. Recovering Landscapes: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture. New York, NY. Princeton Architectural Press. 1999

MPR NEWS. Minneapolis Urban Farming. http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/04/15/minneapolis-urban-farming/

" e (Architectural) Multi-Agent System, 21 October 2011. http://cookingarchitecture.tumblr.com/page/2

CONCLUSION:" is elaborate plan is a general test of a symbiotic machine in the city fabric speci# cally testing the productive vineyard as land banking, energy harvesting, storm water recycling/ mitigating, added value of surface parking, extended bike paths, and a celebration of a new identity to a previously lost neighborhood. Like a row of vines tethered together, the variety of smaller systems in this project work in tandum to support a larger # eld of a community