Barrel Forest Distillery

At the start of the semester, we were given a two week project to reinterpret basic architectural elements like walls, columns, and roofs. I chose to redesign a CMU block into a new wall system capable of forming curved surfaces, and a column system where the floor joists curved upward to become the columns themselves. This exercise led directly into the semester’s main project,  a whiskey distillery along the LA River, where both systems found new purpose. The curved timber columns echoed exploded whiskey barrels, while the concrete blocks suited the surrounding typology, industrial warehouses. The building’s form responded to its context: a rail overpass bisecting the site and the river to the east. The offset block wall provided shade from the southern and western sun, created space for egress, and allowed ocean breezes to cool the interior through skylights above the timber columns, which served as both structural supports and visual connectors between the distillery floor and the restaurant above.