Lilly Saniel-Banrey

Designer of many things. Sowing joy and wellbeing into the details of everyday life. Currently at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. See a full scope of work including architecture, graphics, objects, and documents. Or just see my current projects.

Distillery 01


 Proposed 2022
Roslindale, MA

Harvard Graduate School of Design
Studio by Eric  Höweler


This project blurs the edge between industry + artisan, contrived + natrual, productive + unproductive. The distillery mediates between elements but ultimately focuses around the narratie of a product. Instead, the distillery can shift from the farse of a singular image of experience toward a gentler, more deferential expression of the balance between nature and industry. Negotiating edges of site, neighborhood, and temporality, Distillery 01 uses the roof as a performative examination of edge. Seemingly floating above the ground on a series of slender columns, the roof obscures production (hidden below ground) but ultimately opens and is eaten away by trees on the site . In culmination, The roof interacts with a series of “strings” - mechanical, circulation, plumbing and structural elements which puncture the roof line and create a folly-littered open plaza at the ground floor. 


The experience of the distillery shifts from the farse of a singular image of experience towards a gentler, more deferential expression of the delicate balance between nature and industry. The edges blur - by time, nature, industrial mess.




Wedge of industry between Arboretum to the west and MBTA commuter rail and main road to the east


A roof stretches to the bounds of the site. A new pavillion is formed bridging nature and industry. Trees puncture the plaza and dominate the roof form.