Architect Doug Pierson addresses the steel industry on opening night of the 2025 AISC conference.
His passion for metal as an expressive wall choice as well as a durable, environmentally sustainable structural material has remained throughout his career, said Blueplate PR client Doug Pierson (AIA, LEED AP, BD+C), co-founder/partner and design principal at pod architecture + design (pod a+d) in Chapel Hill, NC. He spoke to a receptive audience of the nation’s steel industry professionals recently.
During the American Institute of Steel Construction’s (AISC) opening event for “NASCC: The Steel Conference,” Pierson told the crowd that he and experiential designer Youn Choi, partners in life and work, learned to “love the I-beam” while working on the Rabbit Hole Distillery project back in 2015 as a case study for a modern, metal-clad bourbon distillery in an urban context. They worked with their client, Kaveh Zamanian, a psychologist-turned-whiskey maker and Rabbit Hole Distillery founder, who joined Pierson for the AISC presentation.
That case study became the first phase of the Rabbit Hole Distillery campus: a modern, metal, $18 million spirits manufacturing facility in Louisville’s historic NuLu district, which his studio designed in close collaboration with Zamanian.
At the grand opening in 2018, this nontraditional distillery met with public fanfare and an avalanche of accolades from city leaders, the architectural press, and the spirits industry. Eric Gregory, president of the Kentucky Distillers’ Association at the time, called Louisville’s newest distillery “a modern monument to our legendary industry.” DistilleryTrail.com dubbed it “an Urban Bourbon cathedral.”
After winning design awards from AIA Kentucky and Metal Construction News, Rabbit Hole subsequently won “World Travel Awards” for 2022, 23, and 24. As a result, Zamanian realized the distillery should grow its hospitality accommodations to match the demand. So, he and pod a+d continued to work together on the next phase of the case study: a dynamic regeneration project expanding tours, tasting events, and office space and, in the process, transforming the NuLu neighborhood’s street façade at Jefferson Boulevard.
Only this time, their study factored in the American Institute of Architects’ (AIA) 2030 Commitment, which provides all architects with an actionable and practical path to carbon-neutral, net-zero buildings by the year 2030.
Just in time for the AISC presentation, pod a+d completed a data-driven, fully tested study, including a large, detailed model, for a city-block-sized Rabbit Hole expansion project that would meet the AIA’s 2030 Commitment. On invitation from the European Cultural Center in Venice, the partners shipped the exhibit to the Italian city for TIME, SPACE, EXISTENCE, the ECC’s 2025 Biennial Architecture Exhibition, to be on display from May 10 to November 23. For a “sneak peek,” Pierson brought an in-progress slide presentation to the AISC conference.
Pierson leads AISC audience down the Rabbit Hole
While most of the conference’s events were held in the Kentucky International Convention Center, pod a+d’s presentation took place in Rabbit Hole. Immediately after his talk, Pierson led two tours of the distillery for the number of attendees who signed up to see the 55,000SF facility. The tours concluded in “Overlook,” Rabbit Hole’s cantilevered tasting room and event space, for appetizers and samples of Rabbit Hole’s bourbon and rye, as well as panoramic views of the historic Louisville neighborhood.
- For more information on the AISC Conference, visit www.nascc.aisc.org
- For more information on Rabbit Hole Distillery, go to www.rabbitholedistillery.com.
- For more information on pod architecture + design, go to www.podand.com.
- For more information on the Biennale Time Space Existence, go to timespaceexistence.com
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