Not Your Average Winery

Americans can finally appreciate the work of artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser on home soil, with the opening of the Quixote Winery in California’s Napa Valley. Owner Carl Doumani commissioned the eccentric Viennese-born artist to design the building after spotting his distinctive prints in a calendar. Work on the winery began in 1988 and took almost a decade. “People either love it or they think it’s the nuttiest thing they’ve ever seen,” says Doumani of Hundertwasser’s design, which features a gold onion dome, trees growing out of the roof and no two windows alike. Born Friedrich Stowasser in 1928, Hundertwasser began exploring themes of ecology and personal freedom as a painter in the late 1940s. By the 1980s he was regarded as an influential artist and thinker, and began applying his revolutionary notions to the architectural form. He lived out his years in his adopted home of NZ, where he died in 2000 aged 71. The public toilets he designed in Kawakawa remain one of the country’s leading tourist attractions for design enthusiasts.