Spliced by the Nervión River, Bilbao is a city of beguiling contrasts. In the old quarter, Casco Viejo, on the right bank, the Santiago Cathedral ascends above winding cobblestone streets dating back some 700 years. On the left bank, a newer Bilbao has been emerging since the early 1990s, when a public company called Bilbao Ria 2000 was formed to revitalize industrial areas hit hard by economic crises in the ’70s and ’80s.

Now, the shipyards and container compounds of this old port city have been transformed with open-air esplanades along the water, parks dotted with sculptures, and artful bridges spanning the river. The new skyline is defined by statement buildings by Pritzker Prize–winning architects, like Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao—a “peculiar ship” of a structure clad in undulating titanium plates, which references the city’s maritime past.

The neighborhood of Bilbao la Vieja, said to be even older than the medieval Casco Viejo across the river, was once home to workers in the nearby Miribilla mines (now the site of the green-shingled Bilbao Arena). Thanks to the lower costs, “This neighborhood has always attracted artists and intellectuals,” says architect Jon Irigoyen, who bought a 100-square-meter (1076-square-foot) apartment there with his partner, architect Amaia Guibert.

Before: Hallway

The couple had just formed their firm, I-Architecture, with two friends, Miren Irigoyen (Jon’s sister) and Eneko Dguez De Vidaurreta—and in 2020, they kicked off a full-scale remodel to turn the 10-bedroom boarding house into a home that reflects the city’s ever-evolving ways.

“We thought that it was the best place to explore this new way of thinking instead of going into more traditional areas,” says Jon. “If you go downtown, you will see nice neoclassical architecture, but this energy—this awakening of society, is missing there.”

Before: Living Room

The four friends went to school together at the University of Navarra, and after winning a competition to design a Swiss embassy in Ethiopia, they used their prize money to found I-Architecture. Jon and Amaia’s remodel is one of their first projects—and they did much of the finish work themselves.

The apartment was subdivided into isolated rooms, so they started by tearing down walls to mix things up. “Usually people want a separate kitchen, separate dining room, and separate bedroom, but our idea was to mix functional areas in order to create new synergies,” says Jon. “This new way of living is quite different than it used to be.”

Plus, opening up the interior would bring in more sunshine. “Daylight was really missing from the center of the apartment before,” says Jon.

After: Living Room

The new layout places the kitchen at the center of the home, and the adjoining living and dining spaces are clustered together by the front street-facing windows. Two bedrooms are positioned at the rear facade, and a folding, mirror-polished steel divider separates one of the rooms from a dressing area.

Now, “there’s just two doors in the house,” says Miren. “What I enjoy most about the house when I’m there (which is quite often) is that once you enter the space, you can see the whole thing. You don’t have to go through so many doors and layers to be able to understand each room.”

After: Dining Area

Throughout the project, the group removed extraneous detail to luminous effect. The dressing room’s steel divider slides smoothly along an inset floor track slotted neatly into the baseboard. A steel sink in the bathroom appears to hover, its pipes recessed into the wall, and the bedroom door has no obvious hinges. Furniture, like the built-in couch in the living room and a hanging chair molded from lime plaster, were “made as sculptures,” says Miren.

To further blend form and function, the group stuck to a tight material palette throughout: steel, lime plaster, and wood. They also took a wabi-sabi approach to finishes. “We did the limewash walls and ceilings to reinforce handcrafted imperfections,” says Jon. “The professional masons argued that it was a sacrilege to not finish the surfaces straight and perfectly.”

After: Kitchen

Before: Bathroom

After: Bathroom

Since wrapping up the project last year, it’s not uncommon for the four friends to get together for a meal around the kitchen island, “having some beers, cooking and chatting,” says Jon.

“We were all driven a little bit by this idea of the Friends TV show—you have an open apartment, where everyone is together,” says Jon with a smile. “In Spain, this wasn’t common—even a few years ago.”

After: Bedrooms

More Before & After stories:

A Feral Terrace House Becomes a Magical Garden Home for $423K

A Breakthrough Renovation Reveals a Parisian Apartment’s Good Bones

Two Architects Transform Their Chicago Condo With Wonderful Woodwork

Project Credits:

Architecture: I-Architecture / @impactarchitecture_

Builder: I-Architecture

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Before & After: With a Little Help From Friends, an Architect Couple DIY Their Bilbao Apartment