Rabbit Hole Distillery

With Champagne Metal & Linear Light:

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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 digital versions 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 a whimsical 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.

Global Design Platform Features Project by Blueplate PR Client pod architecture + design

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Archello.com selects 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.

Small Building, Big Impact

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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.

Chapel Hill Firm Wins AIA Kentucky Award for Modern Bourbon Distillery in Downtown Louisville

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New Modern Bourbon Distillery
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.”

Doug and Youn
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.

For more information on Rabbit Hole Distillery, visit www.rabbitholedistillery.com.

For more information on pod a+d, visit www.podand.com.

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, 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.

METAL CONSTRUCTION NEWS: “Dynamic Distillery” – Rabbit Hole takes the Grand Award

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Blueplate PR client: pod architecture + design LLC

In the 2018 Metal Construction News Building & Roofing Awards

RH Ariel View

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

NC Architect To Conduct Construction Tour of Rabbit Hole Distillery for AIA Central Kentucky Chapter

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Doug Pierson will take professional peers through his latest project in Louisville.

RabbitHole1

Carrboro, NC-based architect Doug Pierson, AIA, of pod architecture + design (pod a+d) will conduct a construction tour of the new 55,000-square-foot Rabbit Hole distillery and campus he designed in downtown Louisville, KY, for the American Institute of Architects Central Kentucky Chapter on Tuesday, April 17, beginning at 5 p.m.

Rabbit Hole founder and CEO Kaveh Zamanian and structural/mechanical engineers from Luckett & Farley will join Pierson in giving participating architects “an overview of the inspirations, revelations, and explorations behind the Rabbit Hole distillery with the focus on structural/MEP systems, design excellence, and the user experience,” AIA Kentucky said in its invitation to members.

According to Pierson and his partner/wife Youn Choi, the design embraces the owner’s desire for transparency, as well as a “form follows process” strategy, allowing the building to take shape in response to the bourbon production process it will house.

The abundance of glass throughout the building satisfies the desire for transparency – from the inside out and the outside in. Tours will let visitors see each step along the process of creating world-renowned bourbon. During the day, the transparent/translucent structure will provide panoramic views from the inside to NuLu’s historic streetscape, downtown Louisville’s main street, and the barges and bridges along the Ohio River.

Located on an entire city block at 711 East Jefferson Street in the historic NuLu district, Rabbit Hole Distilling is Louisville’s newest high-end craft distillery. Construction began in October 2016. The grand opening is scheduled for Derby Day, Wednesday, May 5th.

Pierson and Choi are well-known in Louisville for having designed the highly acclaimed “Green Building,” Louisville’s first commercial Platinum LEED-certified building and Kentucky’s first Platinum LEED adaptive reuse structure.

Click here for more information on the April Tour.

Click here for more information on Rabbit Hole Distilling.

Click here for more information on the Rabbit Hole Distillery project.

LOUISVILLE COURIER JOURNAL: “A grand opening for this new distillery in NuLu is set for Kentucky Derby night”

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RabbitHole Pic.png

By Kirby Adams

We don’t know who but we do know where — 2018 Kentucky Derby celebrities may choose to party after the races at a new distillery in downtown Louisville. he Rabbit Hole Distillery, 711 E. Jefferson St., will celebrate its grand opening  Saturday, May 5 with an invitation-only event…

…The new multimillion-dollar distillery in Louisville’s historic NuLu neighborhood is designed by award-winning architect Doug Pierson and will also showcase the identity, tradition, and legacy of bourbon making in Kentucky. VIEW THE VIDEO AND READ MORE