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Adam’s Cidery

Part 2 Project 2010
Graeme Winestone
Liverpool John Moores University Liverpool | UK
The Cidery explores the significance of the apple in human culture. The brief arises from the masterplan, centred around a park. Its aim is to resolve the existing cliff edge condition adjacent to the railway. Orchards grow on site and the apples are stored underground in cold conditions so production can continue all year. Apples from the site are handpicked and carried to the Cidery by the local community.

The biblical tale of Adam and Eve is the story of creation. The etymology of the word Adam derives from the Hebrew Adamah, meaning from the earth, blood and red. The building is a metaphor for this act of creation, the intimacy with the earth, the tree of knowledge and the fall of man. The skin of the building is analogous to bark or apple skins rotting and the narrative of the building follows the process of cider making

The bookshop allows the visitor to glimpse the process as they explore the building. Allowing the user to inhabit the skin and drink cider whilst reading a book. The books are arranged from A – Z, symbolising the encapsulation of mans knowledge.

As the building is approached, small red triangles of Cor-ten steel create the landscape as if the building has blossomed. The visitor walks past the garden of innocence (crèche). The lift allows the visitor to see the apple conveyor as they travel straight to the top of the building. Here the tour of the Cidery begins. The tour then descends through the building via ramps, down past a plateau of water where the apples are washed. Three “houses” sit in the sky containing the bookshops. The façade moves, regulating the amount of light, to PassivHaus standards. The visitor can oversee the apples being pressed, and when there is no activity in the Cidery, can re-appropriate the juicing spaces. The walls in section appear to drip downward as if being juiced. The visitor journeys outside the building and descends into the ground. The final space contains the giant oak maturation vessels, where the cider is tasted and the tour ends.

Graeme Winestone


Following open and incisive leadership of a student Masterplan team, Graeme has produced a project, notable for the sheer brilliance of the design.

Apples have been associated with love, beauty, luck, health, comfort, pleasure, wisdom, temptation, sensuality, sexuality, virility and fertility since at least Neolithic times. Stories and traditions about man's origins connect us to a paradise garden filled with fruit trees, including the apple. The stories are essentially the same, whether relating to the Semitic Adam, the Teutonic Iduna, the Greek Hesperides, or the Celtic Avalon.

This building symbolizes the desire to address and rectify the falling fortunes of ‘real cider’. With its proposals to transform the anodyne landscape of Wavertree Park into an apple orchard, the processes of scratting and pressing, fermentation, blending, and bottling are organized vertically, while the building’s permeability proposes an overlay between machine and pleasure, public and private.

The zero carbon sustainability challenges of the building emanate from the 100% renewable energy ‘district network’ of the Masterplan for the new Edge Hill district in Liverpool. This is followed through into the building in terms of its thermal / energy performance and its structure and construction technologies.

In so doing, the project’s contemporary story links it directly into the deep history of the apple and its significance to our cultural health.

Graeme has proven to be an exceptionally talented student.

Tutor(s)
Prof Doug Clelland
2010
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