The houses of Óscar Miguel Ares have two structures, the main one contains the domestic rooms, the ground floor houses the daily activity while the first floor contains the bedrooms. The second structure is known as the filter, attached to the first structure, it enlarges the front garden and helps to acclimatise the interior.
The complex is built with exposed brick masonry, giving solidity to the whole and transmitting a sense of closeness and a homey feel. The filter is a steel structure that welcomes the house through the outdoor meeting area.
FILTER HOUSES by Óscar Miguel Ares. Photograph by Gabriel Gallegos Alonso.
Project description by Óscar Miguel Ares
The "Filter houses" is a project without artifice. Conceived from reason and measured experimentation, they do not have formal extremes nor have they used materials or trades that were not close. Our sole purpose has been to create a pleasant place for its residents through architecture; aiming to calm the current architectural discourse.
Situated on the urban periphery of the city of Valladolid, the complex of 20 terraced houses located in the Pinar de Jalón district are conceived as the sum of two structures, two completely independent dualities in terms of their conception, nature and even materiality.
1.- The main structure corresponds to the accommodation of the more domestic rooms, where the bedrooms are located on the first floor and the social life is carried out on the ground floor. The well-kept living room is presided over by a fireplace that reinforces the feeling of home, while its windows open onto a large private garden that mediates between the house and the water channel behind it. The whole is built with face brick masonry, which is fundamental for reinforcing the concepts of solidity, shelter and proximity.
2.- The secondary one, the filter, is attached to the main one as a complement. It allows several functions: by means of a simple steel structure, to expand the space available on the ground and first floors; to filter the light by means of various devices, cooling the temperature; to have an intermediate, undefined space between the street and the home for events, meetings, parking or whatever life thinks can be done there.
The filter houses form a duality: the strength and robustness of the home is joined by a lighter, more weightless element; the brickwork is contrasted by the slenderness of the steel structure; and the definition of a specific housing programme is followed by an undefined, open-ended one, subject to the causality of the theatre of life.
2015 
2024.
