Designing a One-of-a-Kind LEED Platinum Teaching Winery, Brewery, and Food Science Lab

The university wanted to build a new viticulture and enology research and teaching winery, brewery, and food science laboratory to advance scientific research, student training, and industry collaboration.

Salas O’Brien worked closely with the university and the project team on this design-build project. Our team used REVIT as the BIM platform to ensure full coordination between structural, architectural, mechanical, and complex process system requirements before construction commenced. This building houses a food processing pilot plant, a dairy processing facility, a pilot brewery, and a wine processing experimentation platform along with 152 stainless steel research fermenters, which give real-time Brix and temperature data to students and researchers. Designs included field-bolted moment connections eliminating major field welding while providing high working bays with 60-foot clearance.

The facility is the first LEED Platinum facility of it’s kind in the state of California. It includes space for scientific research and student training. The building houses a food processing pilot plant, dairy processing facility and pilot brewery.