At first glance, you’d think that the Kyrö Distillery warehouse in Finland is made of wood.
A fair enough assumption, given all the timber farmhouses and barns in the immediate vicinity. And the abundance of pine and spruce trees that give the magnificent landscape a distinctly Nordic ambience.
Initial perceptions, however, can be deceptive.
True, the façade does look like old, charred wooden planks.
But it is in fact, coloured concrete.
Sitting in the quintessentially Finnish Kyrö River Basin, the Kyrö Distillery Company is the most northern distillery in the world.
To cope with increased demand (thanks in part to winning a bevy of international awards), in 2019 the company briefed Helsinki-based Avanto Architects to design a 1,056 sqm storage facility for their oak casks of whisky and gin.
Since the whisky needs to sit in said casks for at least three years before it can earn it’s right to be called whisky, it was decided to build the sprawling warehouse out of concrete rather than wood.
Wood, however, is an integral part of the Kyrö story (among other things, the company founders conceived the concept for this all-rye distillery while enjoying a sauna) so it needed to feature strongly in the building design.
Undeterred, the architects simply disguised the concrete as wood (Ostrobothnian floorboard to be exact).
Two 1.5 x 4.5m moulds were made using original boards from a dismantled barn. Grain patterns, worm and nail holes were exposed by scarfing and sanding the boards beforehand.
With the desired texture sorted, it was time to address the colour.
The rustic charred appearance was achieved by mixing a deep, black Bayferrox 360 pigment through the concrete.
The original plan was to produce the coloured concrete and then paint it even darker at the construction site. The dosage level of 5% pigment, calculated on the total weight of cement, however, meant that the desired hue was attained without the need for any expensive repainting.
Brennan Fell, Managing Director PeterFell Coloured Concrete, (New Zealand’s exclusive supplier of Bayferrox oxide) explains that there’s a lot of science behind the art of colour.
“The process requires expertise around how concrete technology and colour pigment will interact”, he says. “Apart from selecting the suitable pigment, the choice of the right cement is really important, as the type of cement used will influence the shade”, he says. Attention too need to be paid to how the pigment reacts with the concrete aggregates.
The specialists at PeterFell help clients across New Zealand push the boundaries with coloured concrete in commercial and residential builds.
We have an extensive range of colour options available, plus you can order free samples to help you make your final decision.
Credits
Architecture: Avanto Architects
Photography: Kuvio
