The practice based in Valladolid, Contextos de Arquitectura y Urbanismo , leds by Oscar Miguel Ares, was commissioned to reform this house in the Valladolid, a city about two hours drive north of Madrid.

The project reflects on concepts such as comfort, warmth, proximity, light, texture, tacticity, warmth, gloom; universal concepts and categories; that seem forgotten today by other more ephemeral.

Óscar Miguel Ares designed this renovation paying attention to spatial needs identified after long hours of talk with its inhabitants / friends, the planimetry is not the prevailing factor, but the result. As Aldo Van Eyck said: "(...) Architecture should not do more, or in any case less, than help the man to return home."

To find the desired comfort, the house was conceived as a nest, a protective wooden shield that surrounds, protects, gives warm and provides with a tactile condition to the space. Therefore, the material attributes impose on the geometry.
 

Project description by Óscar Miguel Ares

Victoria’s House is located in a drab building in the centre of Valladolid. Its greatest qualities are orientation, which provides with natural lighting to the whole space and its large surface. The small scale of a renovation project should not be a barrier but a chance for considering concepts such as comfort, warmth, proximity, light, texture, tepidity, gloom… Universal ideas and categories that today seem to be forgotten and replaced by others more ephemeral and vain.

Living well is related to the human need of having a home, not just a house. A complex concept that cannot be created, imagined, and much less, projected by an architect due to the subjective transcendence linked with this kind of commission. A sort of assignment where multiple objective factors like furniture and emotional objects, have to work together with the more subjective ones - family, conjugal life, friends, coexistence - that this duty embraces. As architects, we must limit ourselves to provide the conditions for this to be able to happen. Create scenography and supports for life; producing atmospheres and conditions for the essential habitat.

Many times, geometry directs what should be just the free expression of life. Too many beautiful plans, strictly ordered, polished and exquisite drawings ready for the media diffusion. Works that take the visual condition of architecture to the ridiculous limit where all is reduced to a two-dimensional graphic nature.

It is not about giving up the plan, since it facilitates through measure and proportion the distribution and arrangement of the space, but rather it should be the result from a way of projecting space that is less aware of formalization and publication.

That is why, in this house, the planimetry is not the prevailing factor, but the result of spatial needs identified after long hours of talk with its inhabitants / friends. To find the desired comfort, the house was conceived as a nest, a protective wooden shield that surrounds, protects, gives warm and provides with a tactile condition to the space. Therefore, the material attributes impose on the geometry.

Wood, in its natural version - oak - and plywood - white - surrounds the main spaces of living room, hallway and main bedrooms. A wooden adjustable enclosure that depending on the living space serves as furniture becoming bookshelves, cabinets or table… or acts as a climbing plant which flows along the house walls at a certain height, penetrating each nook, wrapping books, musical scores, objects. That serves to generate domestic landscapes ready to be contemplated. The main aim was to provide the inhabitants with the home they wanted. As Aldo Van Eyck said: "(...) Architecture should not do more, or in any case less, than help the man to return home."

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Collaborators
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Barbará Arranz González (lead architect) Sergio Alonso, Carmen Gimenez Sanz, Felipe María Pou Chapa, Eduardo Rodriguez Gallego, Judit Sigüena Gonzalez, Luis Matas Royo, Dorota Tokarska y Jesús J. Ruiz Ruiz.
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Builder
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Arca Grupo Carranza S.A.
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Area
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185 m²
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2018-2019
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Óscar Miguel Ares. Valladolid, 1972. Archtiect from School of Architecture of Valladolid, in 1998. In 2010, he obtained the title of Doctor from the University of Valladolid - for the thesis "GATEPAC 1928-1939" - being his tutor Mr. Juan Antonio Cortés. Since 2013 he is professor of design at the ETS de Arquitectura de Valladolid. He has collaborated, as visiting professor, at ETSA La Salle (Ramón Lluch University, Barcelona), at San Pablo CEU University (Valladolid) and at the School of Design at Al Ghurari University (Dubai, UAE).
 
His texts and works on architectural criticism have been published in different publications as well as by the composition and projects departments of the ETSA Madrid, UPC in Barcelona –with whom he has assiduously collaborated as editor in the publication DC Papers-, ETSA in Seville and ETSA Cartagena. He has given conferences and lectures in Helsinki, Mexico City, Porto, Pamplona, ​​Barcelona, ​​Madrid or Seville. Author of the book: "Alternative Modernity. Transits of form in Spanish architecture (1930-1936)" University of Valladolid (2016).
 
Since March 2012 he has been carrying out his professional work alone, together with the architect Bárbara Arranz, under the Contextos de Arquitectura y Urbanismo brand. As an architect he has won various competitions, his work being awarded at the XIV Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism 2018; work exhibited in the Spanish Pavilion of the XII Biennale di Venezia (May 2021); selected in XI Biennial of Ibero-American Architecture of Architecture and Urbanism Paraguay (October 2019); finalist in the 2018 FAD Awards; finalist in the 2017 Spanish Architecture Awards; selected Enor Awards (2020), Awarded with the American Architecture Prize (New York, 2017, Bilbao 2019); Awarded with the International Architecture Awards 2018 granted by The Chicago Athenaeum / Europeen (Athens, 2018); Awarded with The Plan Award, (Venice 2018, Milan 2019); more than a dozen awards and mentions at the Castilla y León Architecture Awards (2009, 2011, 2016, 2018 and 2020), as well as awarded at the Castilla y León Sustainable Construction Awards (2017 and 2018). His works have been published in numerous national and international magazines, including METALOCUS, Domus, Arquitectura Viva, Tectónica, Hic Arquitectura or Baumeister, On Diseño and he has exhibited in Madrid, Seville, Venice, Paris and New York.

Director, together with Anna and Eugeni Bach, of the XV Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism, "Empty Spain / Full Spain; conciliation strategies", forming part of the different juries of the awarded categories.


2016  2015

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Published on: February 11, 2020
Cite: "Helping to return home. Victoria´s House by Óscar Miguel Ares" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/helping-return-home-victorias-house-oscar-miguel-ares> ISSN 1139-6415
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