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Set amidst vineyards, the restaurant and bar are housed in a pair of limestone-clad steel-framed saucers, tilted forward and topped with green roofs, while the winemaking facilities are largely subterranean.
How do you create an attention-grabbing modern building that integrates seamlessly with its timeless rural setting as though it has always belonged there? This conundrum faced Bord Architectural Studio and Tihany Design when they collaborated on Sauska Tokaj, a new hilltop winery and restaurant complex near Rátka, in Hungary’s UNESCO World Heritage-listed Tokaj-Hegyalja wine region. The resulting structure—a pair of limestone-clad saucers—is both strange and familiar, like a UFO that’s just touched down or is emerging, chrysalislike, from the earth. It’s almost as if the Hungarian countryside itself is giving birth to the next wave in contemporary architecture.
“Normally, you couldn’t build anything here because it’s a protected area,” says Péter Bordás, principal of Bord Architectural Studio. “But somehow this particular hill isn’t part of it.” Searching for a building typology that minimized site impact yet realized the client’s vision of a brand-enhancing, destination-worthy landmark, the architect rejected working in the vernacular as “fake.” Instead, he turned to the sphere as a structural form that requires minimal contact with the ground or can even seem to float above it. He cut off the sphere’s top and bottom caps and placed them on the ridge. Slightly overlapping, the steel-framed, limestone-clad bowls, each 118 feet in diameter, are gently tilted to follow the slope of the hillside, from which they survey the landscape like a pair of benevolent eyes.
Behind the Design of Sauska Tokaj, a Hilltop Winery
In Rátka, Hungary, a curved canopy overhangs the entrance to the restaurant and bar at the rear of Sauska Tokaj, a winery by Bord Architectural Studio and Tihany Design.
The architecturally iconoclastic, two-level winery breaks regional precedent in other ways, too. “We had to accommodate hospitality functions—a restaurant and bar—which have never really existed in this area,” Bordás continues. Nor has the kind of large-scale industrial production the facility supports. “You don’t see any ‘factories’ here because, traditionally, the region’s winemakers dig small cellars and put the aging barrels there.” Following that artisanal model, the architect has buried all the viticulture works and equipment either directly beneath the bowls or in the hillside behind them. Only the fermentation areas, with tall stainless-steel tanks encircling rows of oak wine casks, are visible through the glazed gap between the building’s spherical undersides and the ground.
The twin bowls house the restaurant, bar, and dining terraces. Together with the reception area and a tasting room—about a quarter of the 63,000-square-foot winery—they were outfitted by Tihany Design. The client, familiar with the firm’s work in Hungary and elsewhere, approached now-retired founder and Interior Design Hall of Fame member Adam D. Tihany, who initiated the project and remained involved throughout, working closely with new owner and principal Alessia Genova. She’s the first to admit that the intersecting cup shapes of the two major volumes with their sloping walls presented a challenge. “We needed to be respectful of Peter’s unique architectural vision,” she says, “creating an interior that complements the exterior while also providing a warm restaurant ambience.”
Backed by a sunken garden, the custom oak reception desk’s biomorphic form echoes the curves of the building.
How Biophilic Elements Inform Sauska Tokaj
One issue was that the entry and reception area are located at the rear, so arriving patrons don’t see the structure’s sculptural form, which is mostly hidden by the crest of the hill. It’s not until they pass through a skylit tunnel and reach the restaurant itself that they get to experience the building’s complex curves, though the sweeping arc of the forecourt canopy hints at things to come. So does the custom oak reception desk, a massive biomorphic form that not only echoes the architecture but also recalls, as Genova notes, “the hills of Tokaj as well as the wood barrels and other organic elements that go into winemaking.” Behind the desk, a glass-enclosed, sunken garden brings in natural light and offers a view into the tasting room beyond, one of the few orthogonal spaces in the hospitality area. At the end of the restaurant tunnel, immediately before the maître d’ station, a curving staircase leads down to the fermentation areas, the only section of the winemaking facilities that is accessible to the public.
The dining area spills across both bowls, each boasting a large hemispherical terrace for eating, lounging, and taking in the vineyard-dotted panorama. Near the entrance, the wine bar exemplifies Genova’s response to the spaces’ curvilinear geometrics. A marble-topped horseshoe faced in oak, the stool-lined counter curls beneath an illuminated tubular ceiling fixture with an integrated stainless-steel wineglass rack. This striking element not only anchors the bar but also acts as a node from which deep track-lighting grooves radiate like a sunburst—a dynamic feature that, the designer observes, “creates the same dramatic effect you get on the outside of the building on the inside, while putting a focus on the glasses and the bar, attracting people to it.”
Beneath a curving soffit, the open kitchen dominates one of the restaurant saucers, where flooring is either limestone or stained oak, as it is throughout.
An open kitchen—similar to the bar in form, materials, and space-orchestrating function—dominates the second dining area. Walnut fluting encases the steel structural columns, introducing a note that harmonizes classical refinement with rustic warmth. The same wood, which Genova describes as “soft to the touch, velvety,” is used throughout for millwork and furniture. The plaster-finished walls share an equivalent silky tactility and are rendered in the palest green, a delicate hue echoed in the napkins and other details. By contrast, the custom bronze-and-alabaster sconces punctuating the rooms are anything but reticent. Resembling tiny flying saucers, the captivating fixtures could almost be the offspring of the mother ship that shelters them.
This Winery by Tihany Design Looks Straight Out of a Sci-Fi Dream
Set amidst vineyards, the restaurant and bar are housed in a pair of limestone-clad steel-framed saucers, tilted forward and topped with green roofs, while the winemaking facilities are largely subterranean.
Naturally lit via the glazed gap between the saucer’s underside and the ground, a fermentation area’s oak barrels are encircled by stainless-steel tanks.
Viewed from reception across the garden, the wine-tasting room is outfitted with This Weber’s stackable Camden chairs and Gabriel Hendifar’s Lariat sconces.
The sunken garden provides daylight to reception and adjacent subterranean spaces.
Sauska Tokaj Glows After Dark
The other saucer includes the horseshoe bar, above which track-lighting grooves radiate from an illuminated fixture incorporating a stainless-steel wineglass rack.
In the restaurant, steel columns clad in walnut fluting frame a high table and stools overlooked by a custom sconce.
Dining terraces front both saucers, which appear to float above the landscape when their undersides are illuminated and the fermentation areas glow lanternlike after dark.
BORD ARCHITECTURAL STUDIO: CSILLA KRACKER; ROBERT GYÖRGY BENKE; FRUZSINA DAMÁSDI; RÓBERT GULYÁS; ÁGOTA MELINDA KERESZTESI-ANGI; ANDRÁS KÉKI; BALÁZS MÓSER; GYÖRGYI PÜSPÖKI; TAMÁS TOLVAJ; KATA ZIH. TIHANY DESIGN: ADAM D. TIHANY; MARCO BARONE. CRISTINA MENOTTI: GRAPHICS/BRANDING CONSULTANT. JVL STUDIO: LIGHTING CONSULTANT. HYDRASTAT: STRUCTURAL ENGINEER. BORD HVAC ENGINEERING: MEP. ARTDOT: MILLWORK.
ERTL BÚTOR: CUSTOM DESK (RECEPTION). ARTISAN: STOOLS (RESTAURANT, BAR), CHAIRS (RESTAURANT). PORADA: CUSTOM TABLES (RESTAURANT). VERY WOOD: HIGH TABLE (RESTAURANT), CHAIRS (TASTING ROOM). UNOPIÙ: CHAIRS, TABLES (TERRACES). VERASCHIN: CIRCULAR SOFAS. CASAMANCE: SEATING UPHOLSTERY. TUUCI: UMBRELLAS. ATELIER VIERKANT: PLANTERS. APPARATUS: SCONCES (TASTING ROOM). THROUGHOUT FOGLIZZO 1921; MOORE & GILES: LEATHER UPHOLSTERY. GC: PAINT.