Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners’ Macallan distillery and visitor centre is an ingenious response to both programme and place, discovers Ben Addy

What a business. With hundreds of millions of pounds worth of product ageing in ranks of vast green hangars it is impossible to visit the Macallan Distillery without pondering, with a smile, the remarkable and audacious economics of the Scottish whisky industry: an industry that makes use of the cheapest and most abundant inputs available in this part of the world (water and barley) transformed by a simple process that is as old as civilisation — and yet the end result, conditioned in second-hand barrels before being packaged up in sophisticated branding, outstrips every other industry in terms of its net contribution to the UK’s balance of trade.

Given how assiduously and seductively scotch whisky is marketed to achieve this feat it is unsurprising that the locations where this production takes place have always featured in the mythology: from the historic antecedent of the illicit still hidden in a remote glen to the romantic but functional pagoda roofs that came with industrialisation in the 19th century. Think also of the bondhouse supergraphics that proclaim brand identity in building sized lettering to the surrounding landscape and it seems that it was only a matter of time before the industry picked up on the potential, already identified in the wine making business, for contemporary architecture to further increase brand distinctiveness. 

Macallan, or rather The Macallan, under Creative Director Ken Grier stole a march on its competitors in autumn 2012 by appointing Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners to design their new distillery after a limited competition process. Much as the chutzpah — and it must also be said skill and particularity — of the distillers draws a smile this new building also provokes delight — from the rolling roof form with its startlingly direct but nevertheless successful analogy to the undulating landscape of the lower Spey valley to the choreographed theatre of the visitor experience as well as several much subtler allusions embodied elsewhere in the building. 

The building is arranged as a linear sequence of circular cells set into an east facing hillside with the River Spey at its foot. Each cell sits beneath its own ‘barrow’ in the roof form. The three middle cells are the ‘still houses’; each containing all the equipment required for the distillation process, in effect the building operates as three distillery processes running in parallel, immediately suggesting how the operation could be expanded in the future through the addition of further cells. At the north end of the sequence the mash house provides the first step in the production process — again with an eye to future expansion the plan provides open spaces for additional mash tuns and grist mills to enable doubling of capacity should this be required. At the south end of the sequence the principle entrance and public area adapts the trope with a taller barrow coupled with a flattish plateau to provide a cavernous and generous space for the visitor experience. Finally, along the western edge of the building the service spine is set into the landscape providing vehicular access to each cell from a submerged concrete canyon.

Drawing a parallel again with the distilling process the design and construction of this building has been undertaken with great care and precision — from the appealing composition of raking struts and ties that alternate along the leading edges of the roof to the principle beams being arranged in grid form in plan in order to achieve perfect coherence with vertical structure below (as opposed to being normal to the undulating surface). The building is naturally ventilated; the challenge is to get rid of the excess heat and vapour produced by the distillation process in a controlled manner, the hillocks help in this by capturing the hot air in a pocket above the stills, before venting through permanently open triangular exhausts, prominently arranged in a ring above each still house. What might be thought of as a whimsy in the form of the roof is therefore as functional as the ventilation pagodas seen on the Macallan’s neighbours elsewhere along the Spey — indeed once the connection is made the vents, in their triangular shape and symmetry, coupled with their associated lightning conductor ‘finials’ bring to mind nothing other than a scotch whisky distillery.

Underneath the three central barrows each circular grouping of stills, pots and pipework, together with the necessary access provision, has been designed through a close working relationship between RSHP, Engineers ARUP and the industry leading coppersmiths Forsyths. The decision to coordinate as a cluster the necessary vessels for Washbacks, Low Wines, Spent Lees and Hot Pot Ales alongside the bright copper Wash and Spirit Stills - each presented at first floor level with a void beneath, densely packed and then rotationally repeated - very successfully celebrates the inherent beauty of these objects. Crucially for a visitor experience the close adjacency also makes the functional relationship between each component, and their place in the process, abundantly clear. 

The production cells are separated at their southern end from the visitor entrance by a full height glass screen — allowing direct visual connection along the length of the building but in so doing bringing the obvious challenge of maintaining fire separation between the two compartments. This has been achieved by the team through the development of a (now patented) water cascade system that in the event of fire creates a constant deluge of water on both sides of the glass.

With the taller of the five barrows above it, the visitor entrance area is noticeably more cavernous than its counterparts, sufficiently so to contain an enclosed multi-storey drum with public and private whisky tasting areas beneath the timber roof. At ground level the drum houses a bonded warehouse where tiers of privately owned casks are arrayed around a central viewing area. A similar sense of theatricality is on show here as elsewhere — low level lighting, choreographed circulation and material specification combine with the necessary climactic and security separation between publicly accessible areas and the bonded warehouse to reinforce the literal exclusivity that exists between these two domains. Remarkably given that it is located in the centre of the plan and surrounded by a functioning visitor attraction the warehouse climate control must emulate the conditions found in the green hangars elsewhere on the Macallan estate — not too hot, not too cold, a bit damp at times, dry at others — in order to match the maturation characteristics that the rest of spirit, more conventionally housed, is exposed to.

When the alcohol vapour that permeates all spirit distilleries — famously the angel’s share in the case of whisky — combines with moisture and settles on hard surfaces it encourages the growth of a particular black fungus Baudoinia compniacensis. ‘Whisky fungus’ is so pervasive in these environments, particularly the closer one gets to the distillation process itself, that RSHP have specified a high quality precast black concrete by Decomo of Belgium for much of the internal and external walls — such that the fungus merely adds to the material patina over time rather than giving the appearance of dirt or degradation. A similar close consideration for material is present in the roof structure — from the immaculately detailed and fabricated ring beams at the perimeter of each hillock to the surprisingly ordinary ‘construction’ grade of laminated timber used for the beams, soffits and facias. The relatively humble finish to the engineered timber is infact one of the great strengths of the design — for all the sophistication in detail and luxuriant displays of countless bottles of golden liquid in the entrance area the matter of fact material of the roof is a reminder that this is principally a working industrial facility.

The building presents industrial process as theatre and it is very successful in this regard, with a calibrated balance between its constituent parts. The process and visual appeal of whisky making is neither overblown nor underplayed, with the building presenting an enjoyable choreography of form, structure and equipment. The makers of the stills, Forsyth’s, are well known in the North East of Scotland not only for their traditional copper and brass work but also for their extensive involvement in the North Sea oil industry — and with all the exposed pipework, immaculately fabricated pressure vessels, pots and tanks on display here there is a happy sense of appropriateness that the design and construction of this building should have brought together this particular specialist with this particular architect.