On Wednesday, November 15, from 5 – 7 p.m., pod architecture + design (pod a+d) partners Doug Pierson, AIA, and Youn Choi, along with owner/master distiller Tina Williford, will co-host a “Thirst4Architecture” social event in Williford’s Liberty & Plenty Distillery & Cocktail Bar at 609 B Foster Street in downtown Durham.
Thirst4Architecture (T4A) “happy hours” are sponsored by NCModernist, the non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and promoting modernist architecture. Hosted by architecture firms and other businesses in the industry, these networking events are free and open to all modernist design enthusiasts in the Triangle, from homeowners, artists and architects to contractors, realtors, interior designers, et al.
Large, roll-up doors invite breezes inside from the Liberty & Plenty porch.
Williford founded Liberty & Plenty in March 2020 as a 100 percent woman-owned craft distillery. During the November 15th event, guests will be able to sample a selection of her unique, small-batch spirits, including vodkas, gins, rums, and whiskies. She will also provide h’ordeuvres and non-alcoholic beverages.
Along with introducing the distillery to T4A participants, the event will spotlight the architectural transformation of a 3400-square-foot, industrial brick warehouse built in 1930 into a fully operational craft spirits distillery fronted by a modern, casually chic Cocktail Bar. To create this conversion, Williford collaborated with pod architecture + design, the Chapel Hill-based firm with award-winning expertise in modern craft distillery and brewery design and one of Blueplate PR‘s exclusive clients.
Doug Pierson, Youn Choi, and Tina Williford will be on hand, happy to discuss the process of bringing Liberty & Plenty to life in downtown Durham.
Chapel Hill Design Firm and Louisville Distillery Receive Category’s Top Prize in 2022 Metal News Construction Awards
Rabbit Hole Distillery’s award-winning Tank Expansion Building at night. Designed by pod architecture + design of Chapel Hill, NC., the small structure serves as a lantern after dark for distillery staff and other pedestrians. (Photos by Youn Choi)
Metal Construction News magazine (MCN), a national trade publication for the metal industry, has announced that the new Tank Expansion Building on Rabbit Hole Distillery’s campus in downtown Louisville, KY, designed by Chapel Hill, NC’s pod architecture + design (pod a+d), has won the 2022 Project Excellence Award for “Metal Walls – New Construction” in MCN’s annual Building & Roofing Awards program. Under the headline “A Jewel in an Alley,” the project is featured in the print and digitalversions of Metal Construction News.
In 2018, pod a+d partners and principals Doug Pierson, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, and his wife, experiential designer Youn Choi, completed Rabbit Hole’s original structure: a modern, predominately metal, $15 million, 55,000-square-foot bourbon distillery. Subsequently, Rabbit Hole Distillery became that year’s Grand Award Winner among all the MCN Building & Roofing Awards.
This relatively tiny, 1100-square-foot building became necessary when Rabbit Hole Distillery needed three additional 12,000-gallon fermentation tanks to expand the production of its award-winning bourbon. To produce the structure, Rabbit Hole founder Kaveh Zamanian turned again to the pod a+d husband-and-wife team, aware of the couple’s ability to create meaningful modern architecture at any size.
The Result: Multiple Purposes
Despite the building’s diminutive size and practical function — to house three massive fermentation tanks — Pierson and Choi believed it could perform several purposes if designed accordingly. For example, its location on the center-city campus would turn the building into a welcoming kiosk-like structure at Rabbit Hole’s Market Street entrance.
By day, the distillery’s “rabbit jumping down a hole” logo is awhimsical addition to such a hardworking little building.
It could also contribute to the City of Louisville’s plans to revitalize two historic back streets: Nanny Goat Strut Alley, adjacent to the building, and Billy Goat Strut Alley, the sites for the city’s annual Bock Beer & Goat Race Festival.
To sustain Zamanian’s quest for architectural transparency throughout the distillery campus, the designers gave the new building huge windows so that passersby can watch the work going on inside.
The next step was to clad the exterior in a colored cement board and then wrap it in 1000 square feet of 1/4-inch-thick, “Champagne Metallic” metal sheets with one-inch holes. To keep the panels consistent, the duo devised “custom panel conditions.” Pierson explained the concept to MCN editor Marcy Marro:
“As we worked through the process, we were able to generalize it so we could have standard details all the way around. That allowed us to have factory edges for the panels, which was really important.” He noted that the long sides of the panels were never cut.
An eye-catching element of this utilitarian structure appears on the elevation facing Nanny Goat Strut Alley: an enormous version of Rabbit Hole’s whimsical logo, which first appeared above the distillery’s main entrance.
“Something Really Special…for the City of Louisville”
By day, the combination of tinted and perforated metal creates an eye-catching duo-toned effect that supports the building’s appearance as a gateway kiosk to the distillery campus. At night, Exterior Linear LED lights illuminate the exterior walls from behind so that the little building glows like a lantern to light the way for city pedestrians and Rabbit Hole staff.
“Wherever we have a perforated metal seam, we have a very thin concealed light that backlights the cavity, so the perforation holes create the glowing effect,” Pierson told MCN.
Choi added, “We wanted the building to brighten up the context and celebrate the history there.”
Pierson smiled. “Our goal was to create something really special and really interesting for the City of Louisville.”
In declaring the Tank Expansion Building as the best of its category, the MCN design jury seems to suggest “mission accomplished.”
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Published by Modern Trade Communications, Metal Construction News is the leading authority on the use of metal in architectural applications and building design. All of 2022’s award-winning projects are featured in MCN’s December digital and print editions.
Click here for information on pod architecture + design.
Click here for additional photos and specific information on the Tank Expansion Building.
Click here for photos and further details about the Rabbit Hole Distillery.
Rendering of the future Devonian, designed by pod architecture + design
Blueplate PR client pod architecture + design (pod a+d), an award-winning design firm in Chapel Hill, NC, together with visionary real estate developer Gill Holland of Louisville, Kentucky, recently revealed plans for “The Devonian,” a 17,000-square-foot, post-pandemic, community hotel at 1614-24 Lytle Street in Louisville’s historic Portland neighborhood designed to serve local residents as well as travelers.
Unlike standard hotels and motels whose amenities are strictly for paying guests, Holland’s hospitality venture aims to include the Portland and greater Louisville area with indoor/outdoor spaces for community and special events. Along with the 25 small guest rooms, the Devonian will offer a heated courtyard swimming pool, a rooftop deck where Portland-based non-profits can host fundraisers, and easy access to the Louisville Visual Arts gallery next door, the University of Louisville Hite Art Institute, and live music and more at “fifteenTWELVE,” a creative compound on Portland Avenue. Also, The Devonian will be a block from the heralded Table Café, one block from the Waterfront Phase IV (being built now), and less than two miles from Norton Healthcare Sports and Learning Center.
“It’s crazy that there is not one hotel west of Ninth Street in Louisville, an area that, on its own, would be the fourth largest city in the state of Kentucky,” Holland said. “We typically do not announce any projects or partnerships until we have found the financing, but we need to find partners both to get this built and to operate it. So, we wanted to get the word out now that the permitting has been approved.”
Rendering, The Devonian, looking east.
Like most motels and motor lodges along the nation’s highways, The Devonian’s rooms will have open-air access rather than interior hallways, and an open, accessible lobby. Rooms overlooking the pool will face inward to provide privacy for guests and adjacent neighbors.
Established in 1811, Portland is an urban neighborhood northwest of downtown Louisville, located on the Falls of the Ohio River. Fossils discovered at the Falls date back 400 million years to the geological Devonian Period, an interval of the Paleozoic Era. Holland named his new-concept hotel “The Devonian” to honor that source of neighborhood pride.
Following Holland’s lead, pod a+d partners Douglas Pierson, AIA, and designer Youn Choi used abstractions of the fossil forms found in the area to establish tectonic geometries in the building itself: The exposed structure will feature geometric shapes and patterns visible in the corals discovered in the Ohio River’s limestone bed.
The exposed structure will feature geometric shapes and patterns visible in the corals discovered in the Ohio River’s limestone bed.
The Devonian’s specific context is also reflected in the architecture. Located at the threshold between Portland’s iconic warehouse/commercial district to the east and residential neighborhoods to the west, the building’s rugged modernist form, devoid of ornamentation, suggests the raw feel of an industrial warehouse while the glass-enclosed lobby and open roof deck recall porches and breezeways among Portland’s historic homes.
“The Devonian is a neighborhood compass that navigates regional pulls,” said Choi. “To the east, it focuses its view on the historic commercial streets and buildings. To the West, it is a landmark that acknowledges the transition from commercial to residential. To the North, it recognizes its pre-historic era. And to the South, it is an axis to placemaking spaces that are emerging in West Louisville neighborhoods.”
Doug Pierson and Gill Holland have worked together on other projects over the years, most notably The Green Building, a nationally acclaimed, thoroughly sustainable mixed-use commercial project in downtown Louisville that brought community pride back to a forgotten section of that city. The designers and developer hope The Devonian will do the same for the Portland community.
When financing is secured, Holland says construction should begin next spring.
For more information on pod architecture + design, visit www.podand.com.
Client News and Media Recognition 