Sagamore Spirit Distillery received the AIA Baltimore Good Design = Good Business Award, part of the association’s 2018 Excellence in Design Awards. The Good Design = Good Business jury included Amy Bonitz, President and CEO of the Baltimore Arts Realty Corporation; Thibault Manekin, co-founder of Seawall Development; and Nicholas Tomaszewski, AIA, architect at Design Collective.
The Sagamore Spirit Distillery, designed by architects Ayers Saint Gross, is one of the Sagamore Development Company’s first completed projects in Port Covington and the face of the Sagamore Spirit brand. Beyond designing a distillery, Ayers Saint Gross transformed a brownfield industrial site into a cultural destination with a layered visitor experience. Architects paid careful attention to the dual role of an active whiskey production facility and a visitor destination, allowing for the delivery of raw materials and shipping of finished product alongside a memorable visitor experience. The jury commended the comprehensive design approach through contemporary references of the brand’s rich agrarian and industrial history. The combination of poetry and purposeful space-planning generates a village environment that invites visitors to learn, connect, and play in addition to the functional necessities of whiskey processing.
