Where Form Meets Function
Brian Steinhobel is recognised globally as one of the world’s most talented, prolific industrial designers with a career spanning three decades. Over the years, he has designed everything from parts for Formula One racing cars and airplanes to sensually shaped chairs and ice buckets suggestive of the female form. In designing the focal point of the wine gallery, an enormous three-dimensional wine rack holding 1500 bottles and bearing over two tons of weight, Steinhobel was inspired by a humble corkscrew. The 3.2m high, 6m long structure is a literal translation of a corkscrew or helix shape. ‘The shape was also informed by the free form curves and organic growth of vines. The human scale of the wine rack enables you to engage with it, by walking through it and enjoying the sense of being inside a vineyard, with the vines arching over above your head,’ says Steinhobel. ‘I like to think of this as an experiential, functional piece of art – beautiful to look at, understandable, timeless and inspiring, each curve holding something of value – a bottle of wine.’ Steinhobel chose to mould the wine rack out of carbon fibre for its connection to the earth and the notion of terroir with its significance in giving wine a unique identity and sense of place. Designed to hold 1500 bottles, each nestled in a specially designed, protective polimer boot, the structure had to be installed in pieces. The end result is ‘light to the eye’, according to Steinhobel, rather than monolithic.
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