The "Su Entu Winery" by Casciu - Rango wins the business category of the "Ceramic Tiles and Architecture" competition.

"Architecture for production facilities inevitably feeds on the dialogue between machines and territory. Machines represent practicality and thus parts styled in response to production requirements. The concept of territory refers to the availability of raw material for processing, but at the same time, as Corboz said, territory itself is a product, a space where the peoples who occupy it coexist and for the organisational relationships established on it, the outcome of processes of use. This means that the buildings used by craftsmen, farm buildings, industrial buildings, and buildings used for the purposes of production in general, have participated and continue to participate in the construction of the territory, not just because they are often “large” containers but due to their past and ongoing contribution to areas of territory, defining their vocation, their productivity and landscape, and also constructing new images for the same locations. The design for the Su Entu Winery at Sanluri fits into this concept". This is how architects Mario Casciu and  Francesca Rango describe the origins of their work on the winery.

"It is located in the countryside of the Medio Campidano area of Sardinia, a district which over time has partially abandoned its historic focus on farming. In 2010, the decision was taken to re-plant vineyards on an area of land, using an existing building as the operations base. The Winery’s expansion, necessary to meet the estate’s production requirements, led to the construction of a new building next to the old one, in the highest-lying part of the land, with a fine view of the whole of the surrounding area. The building is simultaneously both machine and territory.

Square in plan with a central courtyard, it contains the organised spaces of the machine, housing the phases of the wine-making process, but these same spaces also look out onto the territory and establish a dialogue with it. The courtyard serves the production and sales areas, each side containing one of the production phases. The zone where the wine is fermented is housed in a double-height stone-built section, linked to the rest of the building by an overhead walkway. The courtyard also gives access to the bottling area and the upper floors, or the sales/tasting zone, with a large glazed section overlooking the surrounding landscape. A single building, the partially sunken construction which houses the barrique cellar, breaks up the rigidity of the ground plan with its non-perpendicular placing. From the outside the building looks massive and impervious, clad in stone and white plaster, with just a few openings designed to offer views of the landscape around. The exceptions are the East front with the glazed walls running right around the tasting wing, and the large, full-height window of the office area to the South.
 

The winery is designed to fit into its context intelligently in terms of wind direction and sunlight exposure. It is positioned to provide shelter from the prevailing winds to allow use of the outdoor areas. Small design touches such as the pergola on the façade and the canopy roof of the courtyard provide protection from the sun at the hottest times of day. The barrique cellar is sunken to ensure the necessary humidity level, so that additional systems are only required in unusual conditions. The project used mainly local materials, such as the basalt and schist rocks quarried in the area, and in all cases sustainable materials such as wood for the structures and ceramic tiles for the floor coverings.

Architects Mario Casciu and Francesca Rango chose Marazzi SistemN and SistemT porcelain floor tiles not just because they provide the convenience, strength and durability needed in a project of this kind, but also due to aesthetic considerations: these coverings harmonise perfectly with the stones and plasters typical of Mediterranean architecture, and help to provide the feeling of continuity between the rooms of the winery, which becomes a fluid, uninterrupted space".