During a city council meeting
last year, Del Britton, mayor of the Napa Valley hamlet of St. Helena, told Carl
Doumani that he understood "that hearing the word ‘no’ is difficult for a
developer." Doumani, builder, vintner and bon vivant, likes to be developing
something somewhere at all times—and he is still surprised that the city council
turned down his idea to construct an office park on 10 acres he owns along
Highway 29. "There’s nothing on the property now but 65-year-old Zinfandel vines
that are craggy and ragged, but the neighbors think they’re pretty and they want
them to stay, and so we’re in a fight," he says. "I had no idea I was getting
into this."
Michael Novak, a city councilmember and physician with a family
medicine practice, has strongly opposed Doumani’s plan. "I would prefer a
vineyard there," he says. "The plans are very grandiose, with a lot of buildings
and a lot of parking spaces. The development would bring in a lot of traffic.
We’re trying to keep the lines of communication open with him so that he can do
something more palatable, taking up less acreage."
The odd thing about this particular clash (now headed for
mediation) is that Doumani’s architectural plans seem in step with the character
of this wine-growing town. The design calls for medical facilities and offices
that look more like a row of barns fronting a two-story building. It is a tame
aesthetic compared to the Friedensreich Hundertwasser–designed visitors’ center
at Doumani’s aptly named Quixote Winery 10 miles away in the town of Napa.
"I thought I’d get opposition to my winery building, but people
like it," says Doumani, 74, who owns a huge collection of Don Quixote editions
and figurines. In person, he comes across as less quixotic than he might like to
imagine. When he devises an unconventional idea, he exhibits an indomitable
resolve that usually sees it through to completion.
He met the Viennese-born artist and architect Hundertwasser in
1988. They spent about a decade creating the visitor’s center, with walls that
wind like a cartoon castle through a chasm in Stags Leap. Hundertwasser died the
year after it opened in 1999. Broken, glossy ceramic tiles in jarring orange,
deep azure blue and Mediterranean turquoise are set into its columns. More
strands of broken tiles run down the undulating walls; no two windows or shapes
are alike.
University of Southern California architecture professor Mark
Gangi calls the winery "magic." The building is secluded from the road and
invisible to passersby, but the huge gold-leaf onion dome is visible from a
distance. "It’s a discovery, it’s whimsy, and Mr. Doumani couldn’t have found a
better person than Hundertwasser to do whimsy. He was the expert, a serious
absurdist," Gangi says.
Because the Quixote Winery is the only Hundertwasser-designed
building in the United States—others are in Japan and Europe—Doumani receives
plenty of attention from architecture mavens. He opened the center to the
general public in February, but visits are scheduled by appointment only, owing
to a deal he made with the neighboring winery, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, which
didn’t want tour buses constantly pulling up to the property. Doumani had to
make the deal because his winery uses the access road to Stag’s Leap Wine
Cellars (not to be confused with his old winery, Stags’ Leap).
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