Bres Water House

• Taramundi
• Museum

The Casa del Agua de Bres, Taramundi, was created with the aim of making known the relationship between cultures and the dynamics of water throughout history. In this installation water is conceived, on the one hand, as a living substance capable of developing a force that men have been using throughout history to perform tasks that require power and routine work.

On the other hand, water is understood as a raw material, either flowing or stored in aquifers from which it is extracted for direct consumption or for irrigation of farmland.

The hydraulic devices presented in the Casa del Agua are not necessarily linked to the geographical space of Asturias. The exhibition argument aims to bring visitors to the installation to the historical and geographical origins of these devices and stimulate reflection on ways of dissemination, and therefore the contact between cultures and civilizations.

The exhibition of the Casa del Agua is organized in two sections dedicated to water as a driving force and water as a raw material. Watermills with vertical or horizontal wheels, saws, light factories, wells for water extraction, waterwheels for irrigation… even the use of water to measure time with the clocks already used by the ancient Egyptians or those built in the 17th century with more complex and accurate mechanisms.

The central space of the Casa del Agua is occupied by a full-scale device that is conceived as a continuous motion machine made up of simpler motor and elevator devices. In this way it is possible to explain the two fundamental types of hydraulic devices, the motors and the elevators, in a closed circuit of constantly circulating water.

There are thus two thematic units linked by the fundamental and common element: water.