The Fordham Abbey Dojima Saké Brewery building houses the making of high-quality saké in small quantities, is a training and educational facility, a visitor experience and Japanese café. It’s the first purpose-built saké brewery in the UK and the start of the Fordham Abbey’s masterplan to regenerate this country estate; welcoming visitors to aspects of Japanese culture.
The brewery’s external form is a single-aisled barn with a duo-pitched roof, three large natural ventilation chimneys, walls and roof clad in berry-red profiled aluminium. The interior layout has been arranged so that the full brewing process is easily accessible for visitors to view. Likewise, the primary structure is exposed internally as a series of nine eccentric galvanized steel portal frames that create a clear-span of 14 m and a maximum ridge height of 8 m.
In turn, galvanized angle section bay-bracing and profiled steel trays complete the structural system and internal wall finish. Stack-bonded blockwork walls are not load-bearing and simply serve as thermally and acoustically insulated room dividers. Services run to all areas and are carefully exposed in galvanized steel.
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