The Pearl Red Winery is a traditional, 100-year-old Chinese rice wine factory for a family-owned exclusive brand, serving both as a production facility and a visitor centre. The design reflects the building’s traditional Hakka origin in the architecture, creating a sustainable manufacturing environment for its centuries-old hand-making techniques.

Arup spent over seven years on the design and construction, drawing on the full breadth of expertise from architecture, structural, geotechnical and MEP engineering to project management and process design. The result is a combination of functional design and sustainable construction in a beautiful development, providing quality wine products and a pleasant visitor experience.

Celebrating traditions with contemporary designs

Our design drew on two significant Hakka architectural traditions. This includes the South China village vernacular of densely packed simple rectangular buildings with richly expressed pitched roofs and simple planar walls, and the traditional communal residence of Hakka people at the UNESCO World Heritage listed Tulou (or roundhouse buildings).  

The Winery’s architecture reinterprets these traditions for a very different function and era. While Tulou originally utilises defensively private-walled residential buildings, in contrast, the Winery is to be open and actively welcoming to visitors.

Pearl Red Winery courtyard. Credit: ZC Studio
The design reflects the building’s traditional Hakka origin in the architecture, creating a sustainable manufacturing environment for its centuries-old hand-making techniques. © ZC Studio

Designing the visitor experience

We placed a hub building at the ‘knuckle’ of the long and narrow site, with production wings stretching on both sides. The hub building not only contains a visitor centre, museum, lecture theatre, restaurant, cookery school and shop, but also houses administrative offices and testing laboratories.

The central courtyard, with its open ground floor and open upper floor arcade, is designed to create an open, cool and shady environment that attracts gentle breezes through the building to provide a respite from hot, humid summers.

From the upper floor of the museum, a high-level visitor walkway extends north and south. This spine route passes through each of the manufacturing buildings providing visitors a unique window into the wine production process.

A sustainable environment

Quality and sustainable production are of top concern. To ensure a contamination-free process, Arup ensured the wine and other products are passed between buildings by Grade 316L stainless steel pipes. The complex also incorporates rooflights and a full building management system to achieve optimal internal environment and air quality while minimising energy and water use.

We also deployed an internal circulation anaerobic reactor, pulsed anaerobic reactor and biological aerated filter to meet the local standard of waste water discharge. Furthermore, a proportion of the waste water is reused for flushing and irrigating after membrane bioreactor processing.

As a result, the factory meets the highly stringent China Green Building Label (two-star A) codes plus ISO 22000 and Good Manufacturing Practices certification.

Pearl Red Winery. Credit: ZC Studio
We deployed an internal circulation anaerobic reactor, pulsed anaerobic reactor and biological aerated filter to meet the local standard of waste water discharge. © ZC Studio
Aerial view of Pearl Red Winery. Credit: ZC Studio
The Pearl Red Winery is a traditional, 100-year-old Chinese rice wine factory for a family-owned exclusive brand, serving both as a production facility and a visitor centre. © ZC Studio

Protecting the beauty and value

A key driver for the development is to follow the lie of the land and avoid destroying the beauty of the valley. Given the challenging ground conditions and soft earth hillsides, we developed a 3D cut-and-fill model to help minimise excavation and backfill, whilst identifying locations where a series of discrete earth retaining walls and structures would provide stability to the site and avoid hillside erosion.

The 100-year structural design also incorporates specific requirements, such as anti-vibration measures, to protect high value wine products in the event of an earthquake.

Ensuring seamless delivery

Our design takes full advantage of modern construction technology, maximising standardisation and modular offsite construction where possible to ease construction in a rural setting.

Our project managers were fully engaged in the process lifecycle, from design management, works procurement and construction management to cost, relocation and quality management from scheme design to close-out stage. This ensured the ambitious project had a smooth delivery.