Brecon Estate Winery was bestowed a Merit Design Award for Architecture at the 2016 San Francisco AIA Design Awards. The winery, remodeled by Aidlin Darling Design, is located on the “Emerald Necklace” of Paso Robles’ progressive wine growing region. The jury noted that the real strength of the project is in its simplicity and its restraint; “The crisp detailing and carefully composed materials make this just a stunning project through and through.”

Brecon Estate Winery strived to reconnect its prized location with its wine and physical presence. To this end, phase one of the remodel involved a complete facelift and reorganization of an existing production facility and tasting room. The previously existing structure had virtually no relationship to the land that surrounded it. Aidlin Darling Design set out to return the building to its agricultural and pragmatic simplicity; faux-historic decoration was stripped away and replaced with earthen plaster and an untreated cedar rain screen. These naturally weathering materials will age gracefully, and are intended to reciprocate the agrarian structures found along California’s Central Coast.

The visitor’s approach to the building’s tasting area was reorganized in an effort to reconnect them physically and experientially to the landscape and the adjacent vineyards. Revolving around a majestic oak tree, the tasting area connects indoor and outdoor space, and includes a large cantilevered deck, large pocketing doors, and a tasting bar positioned as a hinge between inside and outside spaces.

Future plans call for a new subterranean production facility and tasting area nearby. Ultimately, this reinterpretation of place will reflect Brecon Estate’s authenticity, integrity and passion, and the role of place – terroir – in the making of wine.

Aidlin Darling’s approach to design seeks to connect to the inherent spirit of a space, intertwining our experience with our environment through design that is both rational and sensual. With the intent of engaging all of the senses, their projects span a wide range of scale and type, and are as varied and prestigious as the Windover Contemplative Center at Stanford University, James Beard award-winning Bar Agricole, McEvoy Ranch Winery, and residential projects such as Paso Robles Residence and Vineyard Estate.

About Aidlin Darling Design

With a shared interest in exploring design across a wide range of scales, programs, and disciplines, Principals Joshua Aidlin and David Darling started Aidlin Darling Design in 1998 as a woodshop. Based in San Francisco, it is a multidisciplinary design firm with a broad focus, which includes institutional, commercial and residential architecture, as well as furniture, landscape and interior design.

With an emphasis on designing for all of the senses, Aidlin Darling Design has cultivated a team that strives to deliver the highest level of project management, service, and design. Aidlin Darling Design acts as a creative hub for an extended network of builders, fabricators, artists, engineers, chefs, and other collaborators. This collaborative process provides an open and impassioned exploration with clients and partners, and enables a clear understanding of appropriate solutions. Each project reflects a desire to uncover an inherent spirit of place and interpret constraints as catalysts for performative design. The individual character of each project emerges through poetic spatial relationships, material richness, and exacting detail.

To date the firm has garnered over 125 regional, national, and international awards including the 2013 National Design Award by the Smithsonian’s Cooper- Hewitt Nation Design Museum for their complete body of work, a James Beard Award, four national AIA Awards which include two National AIA “COTE” awards for excellence in sustainable design, five American Architecture Awards from the Chicago Athenaeum, two International Civic Trust Awards, and several regional and national awards from the AIA, IIDA, and ASLA.