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

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 Gilbert.

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