Exploring Argentina's Landscape

Patagonia micro-brewery is enhanced by nature’s design

- Jimena Martignoni

Situated in the foothills of the Andes, Bariloche is an idyllic city in Patagonia overlooking blue lakes framed by colour-changing woods and home to Patagonia Brewery (Cervecería Patagonia), which is located in Short Circuit, west of the city and one of the most visited panorama trails in the region. Developed along Lake West Moreno, this area offers breathtaking vistas of the lake, mountains and never ending woods. This natural context inspired the owners of Patagonia Brewery to open their first and only microbrewery, offering craft beverages.

The sensory experience becomes more intimate once at the site and yet probably even more intense. Eliana Bórmida, the lead designer of the architectural and landscape architecture, says: “We wanted the approach to the site to be a sensory experience but, at the same time, we asked ourselves how to avoid negative impacts or unwanted pressures on the landscape with a permanent addition, a place that would attract more people and events. We had to study the site very carefully.”

This desire of knowing the place better before creating any plan was also related, in this case, with the fact that the Bórmida & Yanzon office is based in Mendoza, another province of Argentina, with a much drier climate and different conditions. However, all their largest works are wineries (Mendoza is the most important wine production region in Argentina) and the main objective for those designed areas always was to enhance the source of the industrial process: the value of the land and the fruits it provides. With this in mind, the designers combined the understanding and utilization of the mystic of local woods —their lights and shadows, the trails and the unexpected open vistas to the lake— with the limits set by the local government and the National Parks’ policies for the site and the area.