Macallan Distillery wins at WAF 2019

The Macallan Distillery and Visitor Experience adds another award to its collection by winning the award for best Completed Buildings - Production Energy and Recycling at the World Architecture Festival (WAF) 2019.

RSHP Associate Partner, Toby Jeavons accepted the award at the at the Gala Dinner on Friday 6th December at the RAI Amsterdam.

It is the only architecture awards where all shortlisted architects and designers pitch their work to a panel of expert judges and their peers.

The WAF judges commented that:

"The project is the "distillation" of a complex industrial process translated into a modular building programme. It is masterfully embedded in the landscape through an undulating timber roof with grass cover that takes its inspiration from historic references. In terms of the category of production, energy and recycling, the building uses biomass for energy production and uses the waste products for the distillation process as recycled fuel thereby looking at waste to energy cycles in terms of the production cycle."

Since its completion in December 2018, the Macallan Distillery and Visitor Expereince has been recognised by significant award bodies. These include winning the RIAS Andrew Doolan Award, making the RIBA Stirling Prize shortlist, several RIAS Awards, ArchDaily Building of the Year 2019 (Industrial) and a Structural Timber Award.

Designed by Senior Design Partner, Graham Stirk with Associate Partner, Toby Jeavons as project architect, the new building provided a so-called ‘cathedral to whisky’ that future proofed the Distillery for the future. Internally, a series of visually striking copper vessels - exact copies of those on the original site and crafted by Forsyths - are arranged in circular production cells, revealing all stages of the fermentation and distillation processes simultaneously.

The vast ceiling height above these cells are indicated externally in four peaks of the timber roof, whilst the fifth peak indicates the entrance to the Visitor Experience. It is an engineered landscape of wild flower meadow, rising and falling with The Macallan estate. Informed by the surrounding landscape and the whisky production process, which has taken place on the estate since 1824, the roof’s profile recalls ancient Scottish earthworks.