Victor S. Ortiz
Woodbury University - School of Architecture
Professor: Scrap Marshall
Industrial Alchemy, a distillery project in Vernon, CA, focuses on creating an engaging visitor experience while interrogating environmental sustainability practices. Designed to produce 5,000 bottles per month, it integrates public spaces like a restaurant and tasting rooms alongside distillation equipment. A multi-layer façade system was deployed leveraging natural ventilation, in order to reduce reliance on central air systems, and the use of recycled corten steel to blend with the area’s industrial context.
Industrial Alchemy
The studio’s provocation was to design a distillery in Vernon CA. Vernon CA has a rich history in regards to Los Angeles development as a metropolitan city as it has housed main arteries of supply chain systems along with heavy industrial factories. Today most of Vernon is zoned as heavy industry, but local municipalities have created pockets within the zoning of Vernon that would allow for different types of multi-purpose projects to be proposed.
This is in order to attempt to reclaim and revitalize some areas in east LA that have fallen into disrepair, especially sites neighboring the LA River as the city continues to make efforts in re-envisioning the LA River.
The site our studio looked at intervening on met these criteria of being within suitable zoning while still being neighbored by heavy industrial zoning. A large part of the design problem became curating an experience that would encourage people to visit, as the site sits far from other relevant areas of interest in the city. I decided to design a whisky distillery which required some pretty in depth research as the practice of distillation reaches deep and wide across cultures and centuries.
Some of this research looked at how leftover biomass could be collected and donated to local farmers for livestock feed, and even how water from the LA river could be reclaimed and used in the distillation process. It was interesting to design around an industrial program as the machinery required for the distillation of whisky automatically implied certain design criteria just based on the quantity and sizes of the machinery. While serving as a medium sized distillery that housed enough equipment to produce 5,000 bottles of whiskey a month, the secondary programs that accompanied the distillery included a restaurant and private/public tasting rooms.
These programs were laid out in effort to create an environment that puts the user into the experience of distillation, where the pot stills and mash tuns take the stage. A large part of my research and interest became in the skin/facade of the building, this was due to factors like the site’s location and the large amount of heat produced by the process of distillation and the energy consumption already attached to the production of booze. This led me to investigate how a multi layer facade system could create a more breathable building, taking advantage of solar and stack effects to naturally ventilate the building. This led to 80% of the 30,000 sq ft building not relying on centralized A/C with the exception of a few ancillary spaces. The building’s skin primarily consists of recycled corten steel maintaining some of the local industrial vernacular of the area.
