The Macallan: New Distillery Competition Brief

By Smith Architects

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The Macallan: New Distillery Competition Brief banner

The Macallan was seeking an Architectural practice to assist with building the first signature distillery in the Scotch whisky industry.

The Macallan wanted to engage with some of the best Architects in the world to create an extraordinary new distillery that would be a global icon for the brand.

The brief can be summed up as: A contemporary expression of The Macallan brands core values. The Macallan brand’s consumer proposition is: The last word in luxury.

We helped The Macallan, a brand owned by The Edrington Group, itself a private company in the hands of The Robertson Trust, undertake a two-stage invitational process. A small group of select Architects were invited to the first stage, comprising the submission of an Expression of Interest document demonstrating their experiences, abilities and willingness to carry out the project.

Once the level of interest was gauged, a shortlist was drawn up with the remaining Architects being invited to participate in an ideas competition. During this phase, the Architects visited the existing distillery site and hosted a tour for the client of one of their previous projects.

Following the second stage Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners was appointed by The Macallan, as Architect and Lead Consultant.

The images shown as part of this project are taken from the briefing papers we prepared for the Architects, and are reproduced courtesy of The Edrington Group.

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The Macallan: New Distillery Competition Brief

Smith Architects
Smith Architects
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Smith Architects is an award-winning international architectural practice creating beautiful human spaces that are unique, innovative and sustainable through creativity, refinement, and care.

Phil and Tiffany Smith established the practice in 2007. We have spent more than two decades striving to understand what makes some buildings more attractive than others, in the anticipation that it can help us design better buildings.

Recent advances in neuroscience and psychology have enabled scientists to unlock some of the reasons why we find certain works of art, objects and environments more attractive than others, and at the heart of it is simple Darwinian theory: if we find something attractive we will be more likely to choose that thing over another – be it a painting, a piece of music, a landscape or even a building.

At Smith Architects, we use these learning to inform our designs, striving to create beauty in everything we do, in the belief that beautiful spaces create better environments for human beings or ‘beautiful human spaces’.

We carefully integrates architectural, landscape, interior and furniture design skills to ensure projects achieve an holistic integrity that meets our client’s needs. At the core of our design rigour, we believe that modern, sustainable, research-based design delivers a successful project with innovative solutions that work for our clients.

Our Auckland, New Plymouth, and Arrowtown offices design and deliver projects ranging from refurbishments to new-builds; from domestic scale to urban master plans; from conception to completion. Our experience covers a broad range of typologies – masterplans, mixed-use schemes, residential; offices; cultural; educational; healthcare and childcare.

We work with a diverse client base, including developers, private, government and charities and have experience of working with multiple stakeholders on challenging sites around the world.

We are a member of the New Zealand Institute of Architects (NZIA), the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), the New Zealand Green Building Council (NZGBC), Site Safe New Zealand, and the Sustainability Business Network.