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.
Natural wood strikes a warm note around Rabbit Hole’s public courtyard. Blackened wood louvers around the manufacturing atrium are a nod to the charred wood barrels that give bourbon a smooth, mellow flavor.
For this unique facility — a modern structure in an industry steeped in tradition — the design team embraced the strategy “form follows process,” allowing the building to take shape in response to the bourbon production process it would house. The result: a distinctive, responsive building that shares its design and purpose equally with the building’s capacious copper and steel equipment.
Taking a cue from Louis Kahn’s Salt Institute, the overall form is divided into “service” (warehouse) and “served” (atrium and event space) volumes. A public passageway navigates between the two without intruding on either before it ascends, on a meandering path, through the 60-foot-tall Manufacturing Atrium enclosed by glass and blackened wood louvres. The path continuesover the fermentation tanks, around the 48-foot-tall copper still, and on to “Overlook,” the 150-seat event space.
Throughout the interior journey, the gleaming still is always in view, underscoring the notion of the building as an homage to the craft of bourbon making. READ MORE and VIEW PHOTO GALLERY.
Inside the transparent manufacturing atrium. The 48-foot-tall copper still rises in the background.
pod architecture + design turns tank expansion into modern pavilion at Rabbit Hole Distillery
Expanding a bourbon distillery’s tank space is rarely an architectural opportunity. Tank rooms are hard-working, utilitarian structures where huge metal tanks ferment, distill, and filter the owner’s spirits of choice.
Nothing to see here.
That would be true for this project in downtown Louisville if it wasn’t taking place on founder and CEO Kaveh Zamanian’s Rabbit Hole Distillery campus in the NuLu district. It would also be true if architect Doug Pierson, AIA, and Youn Choi of pod architecture + design were not designing it.
Zamanian, Pierson, and Choi first put their heads together to create Rabbit Hole’s modern, predominately metal, 55,000-square-foot distillery, which the president of the Kentucky Distillers’ Association has called “a modern monument to our historic industry.” (Rabbit Hole received the 2018 Grand Award from Modern Construction
For their latest collaboration, Zamanian’s clear vision fused with Pierson’s and Choi’s design moxie to give his idea form, function, and ample space to house three new 12,000-gallon fermentation tanks, allowing Rabbit Hole to expand its production of award-winning bourbon. Construction should begin in January 2021 and be complete by April 2021.
The tank expansion structure will be situated north of the blackened-wood louvers that surround Rabbit Hole’s “Manufacturing Atrium” where the main tank room and copper stills are located. Understanding the pedestrian nature of the NuLu neighborhood, they will position the 1100-square-foot structure to address both “Nanny Goat Strut’ and “Billy Goat Strut” alleys. Both alleys have been locally famous since the 1800s for the annual beer festival and goat races that take place there. Federal grants will soon fund a restoration of the area.
Pierson and Choi know Zamanian wants only imaginative design and finely crafted construction near his beloved distillery — a sentiment they share, of course — no matter how utilitarian its purpose or diminutive its size. They embrace his intent to respect and enrich Rabbit Hole’s hip, historic urban context.
To that end, they designed the tank expansion building as a transparent pavilion with perforated metal exterior panels that recall similar panels on the distillery. Passersby will be able to see inside.
“It will act as a kiosk-like structure that greets visitors from the Market Street greenway entrance as well as Nanny Goat Strut Alley,” Pierson explained. “It not only faces the alley but also improves it by adding landscaping and a green roof, lighting and security, and a contemporary, civic-like structure that entices people into the space.”
And because the perforated panels will be illuminated from behind, Pierson and Choi believe the building will be a lantern in the dark at night for city pedestrians and for Rabbit Hole staff walking from the distillery’s Market Street entrance.
The small, modern building will also create an outdoor courtyard for distillery visitors and staff to enjoy.
Pierson and Choi will eventually hand the project off to Luckett & Farley, the Louisville-based Architect of Record.
For more information on pod architecture + design, visit podand.com. For more information on Rabbit Hole Distillery, go to rabbitholedistillery.com.
The crown jewel of an urban campus in the heart of downtown Louisville, the award-winning Rabbit Hole Distillery is a new, modern, 55,000-square-foot distillery introduced to an industry steeped in tradition. READ MORE
RENDERING OF FRONT PORCH AND PUBLIC ENTRANCE, by pod a+d
pod architecture + design, an interdisciplinary design firm based in Chapel Hill represented by Blueplate PR, has been commissioned to design Liberty & Plenty Distillery, a new start-up craft distillery planned for downtown Durham that will produce rum, whiskey, gin, and flavored vodkas.
Solely owned by head distiller Tina Williford, MSc, of Raleigh, the project will involve the adaptive re-use of a former distillery in a one-story, brick, 3400-square-foot building at 609 Foster Street. Built in 1938, the structure was originally an RJ Reynolds tobacco packing house and warehouse. The back patio of the property’s Rickhouse event space (formerly an aging warehouse where packed tobacco barrels were stored) faces the old Durham Bulls stadium.
“I love the architectural concept of contrasting a fresh, contemporary space within the steel and wood patina of the prizery,” Williford says. The prizery was the place where the tobacco was “prized” or pressed into hogshead barrels for shipping. “Two traditional types of copper stills and other vacuum-based techniques will be used for distillation and blending based on the spirit created. This use of the space and the distilling processes complement and balance the old and the new.”
According to Doug Pierson, AIA, co-founder and principal architect at pod a+d, the architectural idea for Liberty & Plenty “focuses on the entry, the bar, and on the way visitors will experience the distillery.”
To that end, he and his partner, co-founder/designer Youn Choi, have custom-designed a multi-functional “furniture bar” to accommodate product tasting, retail displays, bottle sales, and casual seating for distillery events in one elegant furniture item.
RENDERING OF THE MULTI-FUNCTIONAL “FURNITURE BAR,” by pod a+d
The “furniture bar” will also create a visual and physical separation between guests and the production process. A physical separation is a state requirement for all operating distilleries.
“In other words, we’ll feed two birds with one seed,” Pierson said. “The furniture bar will satisfy the state mandate while accommodating a host of distillery needs.”
Like their client, the pod a+d team also believes the textural contrast between the clean lines and smooth wood of the furniture bar and the unrefined nature of the old brick building will be part of Liberty & Plenty’s appeal.
As for the name: The unique nomenclature for Williford’s future distillery is as North Carolina-centric as the location: It’s derived from the N.C. State seal. At the center of the seal are two robed figures, “Liberty” on the left and “Plenty” on the right.
This project marks the fourth spirits distillery that pod a+d has designed, including the 55,000-square-foot Rabbit Hole bourbon distillery in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, which has received two design awards to date.
For more information on pod architecture + design, visit www.podand.com and follow the firm on Facebook.
About pod architecture + design
At pod a+d, we believe in the integration of architecture and all aspects of design to connect buildings + environment + identity. That’s why pod a+d is a hybrid firm, offering all architectural services, environmental design, experiential graphics, and wayfinding design. Exterior and interior architecture; furnishings and finishes; financial feasibility and scheduling; engineering and construction; and experiential graphics – considered simultaneously, these disciplines inform our hybrid/integrated approach to architecture. For more information: www.podand.com.
Rabbit Hole Distillery’s transparent Manufacturing Atrium. Designed by pod architecture + design
In a ceremony in Cincinnati, Ohio, last week, Doug Pierson, AIA, and Youn Choi, partners at pod architecture + design (pod a+d) in Chapel Hill, NC, received their second design award for Rabbit Hole Distillery, the metal, glass, and blackened wood structure they designed in downtown Louisville, KY, that the president of the Kentucky Distillers Association called “a modern monument to our historic industry.”
Earlier this year, pod a+d’s distillery design claimed the top “Grand Award” honor in Metal Construction News’ annual awards program.
The Kentucky chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) presented its awards during the AIA Ohio Valley Region’s “Celebrating Design Awards Luncheon” on September 19 at the Hilton Netherlands Plaza in Cincinnati.
The awards jury praised the new distillery as “an exuberant extension of industrial language with playful materiality. There is a legible and contemporary expression of both corporate identity and the process of making at various scales. In this way, the process of production becomes part of the architecture.”
Founder, partners, and principal designers Doug Pierson and Youn Choi.
According to Pierson and Choi, the design embraced the strategy “form follows process” as they allowed the building to take shape in direct response to the bourbon production process it houses.
The design also expresses owner Kaveh Zamanian’s vision for “transparency and craft,” another aspect the awards jury appreciated: “The architectural language in section builds up to create programmatic density in some moments and transparency at the atrium.”
The building’s “strong relationship to the street” impressed the jurors as well.
At pod a+d, we believe in the integration of architecture and all aspects of design to connect buildings + environment + identity. That’s why pod a+d is a hybrid firm, offering all architectural services, experiential design, and wayfinding. Exterior and interior architecture; furnishings and finishes; financial feasibility and scheduling; engineering and construction; and environmental graphics – considered simultaneously, these disciplines inform our hybrid/integrated approach to architecture. For more information: www.podand.com.
pod architecture + design, Luckett & Farley present scheme to investors at special event
During a special event held recently in downtown Louisville, KY, pod architecture + design (pod a+d) of Carrboro, NC, and Luckett & Farley architects and engineers of Louisville, presented a surprising concept for a modern, environmentally sustainable, mid-sized distillery to an assemblage of investors.
Designed for the event’s host, J.W. Rutledge Distillery of Middletown, KY, the 69,000-square-foot facility is intended for 140 picturesque acres of gently rolling grassland just outside Louisville. The architectural concept suggests an elegant, two-building composition linked by physical representations of various elements of the distilling process. In form and footprint, the concept engages the landscape and gently steps downward toward Floyd’s Fork, allowing the process of bourbon-making to flow naturally via gravity, from grain delivery all the way to barreling.
The distillery would also be oriented to convert the naturally occurring stillage (the byproduct of bourbon making) into energy via a biomass digester and to capture heating and cooling through a geothermal pond loop.
This innovative solution was designed by Douglas Pierson, AIA, and Youn Choi, pod a+d’s co-founders and Luckett & Farley’s President/CEO Aric Andrew and Vice President/Distilling Marketer Kyle Beasley. pod a+d and Luckett & Farley also worked together recently as architect and engineers, respectively, on the award-winning Rabbit Hole Distillery in downtown Louisville.
With a projected budget of $20-$25 million, Rutledge’s sustainable distillery will produce “World Class Bourbon and Rye whiskeys,” says Jim Rutledge, owner and multi-award-winning Master Distiller, on his website. “We will produce Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey and Straight Rye Whiskey the ‘old-fashioned way’ relative to the requisites, guidelines, and standards for Straight Whiskey production that have been in place for close to two centuries.”
“This one of a kind campus will engage a breathtaking site in a manner that honors an old-fashioned tradition done well while looking toward the future to thrive,” Pierson added.
The Investor Tasting Event took place in the Mint on Mellwood, a renovated industrial building in downtown Louisville. Investors enjoyed specialty bourbon and light refreshments while they discussed the proposed distillery with the J.W. Rutledge executive management team.
For more information on pod architecture + design: www.podand.com
Blueplate PR client: pod architecture + design LLC
In the 2018 Metal Construction News Building & Roofing Awards
By Mark Robins, Senior Editor
Form follows process. This is contemporary bourbon maker, founder and CEO of Rabbit Hole Distilling, Kaveh Zamanian’s vision for life and for his Rabbit Hole Distillery manufacturing building in downtown Louisville, Ky. This very modern, innovative 55,000-square-foot bourbon distillery, completed in July 2018, exemplifies this vision. The judges for the 2018 Metal Construction News Building and Roofing Awards were very impressed with both the distillery’s form and process, with two of them even saying that if they saw it from a distance while out driving, they would want to drive toward it to learn and see more about it.
“The Rabbit Hole Distillery project is a new contemporary building for a new bourbon manufacturing product in an otherwise traditional industry,” says Douglas V. Pierson, AIA, LEED APBD+C, co-founder/partner, architect and design principal at pod architecture + design, Carrboro, N.C. “A design strategy of transparency was our way of showcasing in a modern way the complex process of bourbon making for all to see, and, while standing on the shoulders of giants, ridding any expectations of secret recipes and obscure traditions.” READ MORE
When Saturday, May 5 rolls around in Louisville, Ky., there’ll be more to celebrate than the 144th running of the Kentucky Derby.
At the corner of Jefferson and Market Streets downtown, a new distillery called Rabbit Hole will hold its grand opening – with a Derby Day party.
“It’s a start-up – 60,000 square feet with fermenters and a couple of stills,” says architect Doug Pierson of Carrboro, N.C.-based pod architecture + design. “When opening day comes, they wanted to be ready to go – during construction, they started their process in a secret location.”
Pierson and his partner Youn Choi designed the distillery as a transparent affair, studying the path of bourbon-making from grain to barrel. “We developed the building around that, from the ground up, so people can see the whole process,” he says. “We said: ‘Form follows process.’” READ MORE
Client News and Media Recognition 