Chateau d’Avize in Champagne: hotel, spa, winery, chateau

date: 2011
cliente: Civile Immobiliare (SCI) du Chateau d’Avize
object:  Chateau d’Avize: Hotel, Spa, Winery, Chateau
location: Avize,Francia
size data:
Hotel and spa gross floor surface 3,405 sq.m.;
Temporary exposition and meetings gfs 600 sq.m.;
Sensory spa n° 1;
Gourmet restaurant n° 1;
Art gallery n° 1;
services: Progetto preliminare
partners: G. Rustignoli Ingegneria

Chateau D’Avize is supposed to become an “outpost” of the wine-producing excellence, a regained antique jewel, from where impulses part for the foundation of a wine-producing zone of Abrau Durso in Russia. The project foresees the idustrial renovation of an old cellar and the adjoining production buildings with the purpose of putting on the market a new wine product Champagne of an organic type. The buildings are located on the outskirts of the Avize village in the middle of Champagne region, a hilly landscape designed by the vineyard patterns and punctuated by villages and chateaux. Thus, the intention of the Client is on the one hand to work on refining their wines and on the other hand, the necessity to renovate the ancient Chateau, transforming it into a symbol of the new course and amplifying the existing activities with a small 5 star hotel+ a spa+ a gourmet restaurant+ an art gallery which is supposed to become a means of comunication for the new brand.
The new hotel will be located above the old cellar which contains 50.000 bottles of champagne, an imbarassing sight because of its bulky, deaf wall which overlooks the wineyard. The presence of the hotel givess thus an opportunity to cancel this sight, integrating the new structure into the prospective pattern of the long wineyard rows. Not a bulky wall anymore, but a “container” where to live, taste, enjoy the sensuality of nature in the middle of the nature itself. The spaces of the wineyard alter their colour and shape with a change of seasons, integrating naturally in the country-line of the place.
The vitality of the structure is also expressed by the underground activities: the old cellars has now been transformed in spa with swimming pools and wellness areas exposed to direct sun rays which penetrate underground with the help of solar sensors