Far beyond Valencia's patchwork walls, the city’s hinterlands lie in ruins, the floods of October 2025 having lain waste to vast swathes of the Albufera lagoon, and its widely-famed sweet rice paddies. With their livelihoods in ruins, this project imagines the community’s farmers crying out for a chance to rebuild, forming the Valencian Farmer-Distillers’ Co-Operative.

Nestled among the backstreets of Valencia’s medieval core, the project restores the 14th-century Palau dels Eixarchs – a long abandoned, decayed shell – as a fresh centre of hope for the Albufera farmers. Bringing the fruits of Valencia’s eponymous region right into the city’s heart, it aspires to capture the community’s essence through simple distillation; the farmers’ harvested graft, fresh herbs of the Valencian uplands and spirited exuberance of the city’s inhabitants, captured within every drop of its gin. Weaving high-temperature industrial production, immersive and sensory visitor experiences and a newfound home-from-home for the Albuferran farmers within Valencia’s historic centre, the Co-Operative’s distillery restores the region’s urban-rural connections for generations to come.