Typically, gabion wall construction is used in prosaic government projects to steady water erosion or boringly- subgrade highway extensions. When these rocks are harnessed in delicate wired cages, their load limit seems endless.
Architects, Herzog and DeMeuron have massaged this ho-hum medium into a buttressed artform. When retained by Dominus Estates, a vineyard in Sonoma, they distilled this construction language and spun it into something extraordinary. Positioned at the entrance of the Estate, they created a sleek and sexy wall using stacked gabion cages.
I love how it looks like a tsunami of rock cresting across the working landscape. With the next great earthquake, rumor has it that California is going to dip into the Pacific. In that event, Dominus will be the renewed, and fully licensed Catalina.
