Habitar PortugalHP

The w& j Graham’s cellars were built in 1890 and currently house more than 3,200 casks of Port wine, vats and oak barrels, as well as extensive stores of bottles of Vintage Port wine. The remodelling project added new uses to the building, revived existing uses and adapted the building to new demands whilst, conserving an already coherent complex and respecting the main activity carried out – the ageing of Port wine.

The organisation of the programme – cellars for ageing Port wine, visitor’s centre and restaurant – allows for the building to be visited on a single circuit – from the entrance hall/reception to the end, i.e. the restaurant, passing by the ageing cellars, tasting rooms, shop and wine bar. The main concern was to guarantee that the building remained fully operational as a wine storage and ageing space whilst opening it up to visitors and creating new complementary spaces. First and foremost, the intervention sought to ‘clean up’ successive layers of infrastructures that were introduced in the course of the 20th century as they became necessary for continued functioning. We completely restructured those infrastructures, creating new ducts underneath the paving, removing concrete paving and reinstating earth oors in the cellars, thus enhancing the pre-existing materiality and the building’s original elements.