Rondout Cider Tasting Room

AThe brief

The shed sits eleven feet from the Rondout Creek in a mapped flood zone that took two feet of water in 2011 and eighteen inches in 2021. The cidery needed a tasting room that seats sixty, works for a wedding on Saturday and a tasting flight on Tuesday, and does not become a $200,000 loss every time the creek comes up. Insurers would not price the first scheme. The design problem was not the room; it was designing a room that can be hosed out.

BWhat we did

We drew a datum at four feet and designed two buildings stacked on it. Below the line: board-formed concrete, epoxy-set porcelain, marine ply cabinetry on stainless legs, no electrics under thirty inches, and a floor that falls a quarter inch per foot to two creek-side drains. Above the line: the warm room — white oak, plaster, brass, wool. Every piece of furniture is liftable by two people, and the mezzanine is sized to hold the entire ground-floor furniture set. Recovery from a flood is now a documented two-day procedure that the staff have rehearsed, which is what finally got it insured.

CThe decisions

1. ---

   01

   A datum at four feet

   One line, drawn on every sheet. Above it the building is hospitable; below it the building is a boat. Contractors understood the whole logic from a single section.

2. ---

   02

   Furniture that goes upstairs

   Sixty covers' worth of tables and chairs, all liftable by two people, with a mezzanine sized to take them. The flood plan is a floor plan.

3. ---

   03

   The bar is the structure

   A single board-formed concrete mass takes the lateral load, houses the drainage, and is the bar. It cannot be damaged by water because it is the thing water hits.

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