Kentucky Owl Park
Kentucky Owl Park
Shigeru Ban Architects
TYPE
Cultural › Gallery, Hospitality + Sport › Amusement Park Restaurant, Industrial › Winery
The Kentucky Owl Park By Shigeru Ban is a 420-acre site dedicated to the production of whiskey along the Kentucky bourbon trail.
The complex includes a vintage train station, a convention center and everything else needed for bourbon production - a distillery, rickhouses for ageing, and bottling facilities.
The buildings are sited within the natural landscape, an old limestone mining site. The secondary function of the complex is a visitor trail that presents the bourbon making process along this scenic route.
Now, the actual animation is built entirely on recreating the experience of visiting the site: You first arrive at the station and make your way through the visitor center, where you are introduced to the distilling process and can already do your first tasting.
You then visit the ‘main attraction’ of the site, the trio of pyramids, where you can see the limestone fountain, the main water source for the bourbon, as well as the distillery area and the third pyramid.
After crossing a wooden bridge, you enter the rickhouse and bottling area, where you then can do more tasting. The complex also offers various outdoor activities unrelated to whiskey, such as a biking trail, kayaking on the lake or hiking through the forest.
