Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners’  Speyside distillery and visitor centre for Macallan reflects the environment in which whisky is made

Buildings.

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Joas Souza

Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners has completed a new distillery and visitor centre for whisky-maker Macallan in Speyside, Scotland. Whisky has been produced at Macallan’s estate since 1824. The new building is set into the landscape of the estate, protecting views of surrounding countryside, and reveals the production process to visitors while allowing the volume of production to increase by a third if required.

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Below an undulating green roof formed of engineered timber, a series of production ‘cells are’ arranged in a linear configuration, which relates to the rise and fall of the soffit. The open-plan layout allows all stages of the production process to be seen at once.

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Visitors’ journeys begin at an exhibition and gallery area, progressing through a sequence of spaces that follow the production story of the whisky.

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Natural materials – local stone, timber and the living roof – are intended to evoke the environment and ingredients of whisky production.

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The visitor centre is open to the public from 1 June. A full review of the building will appear in the July issue of Architecture Today.

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