Geometric Decor and Repurposed Spanish Marble Revive This Bilbao Apartment’s Midcentury Soul

Located in Segundo Ensanche, a neighborhood largely developed in the first half of the 20th century, this Bilbao apartment was in need of a serious facelift. A series of modern modifications accumulated over decades had buried its original character. Some 60 years after it was built, the new owners—a young family—tasked architects Irene Vitorica Donezar and Ane González Lara to restore the apartment's essence and shape it into a functional home.Irene Vitorica Donezar and Ane González Lara, the founders of the Donezar Lara studio In the living room, a custom sofa is upholstered in white linen. A work by Benka, from Alzueta Gallery, hangs on the wall above. The armchair is from Kazuhide Takahama for Simeone Gavine. Donezar Lara custom-designed both the round side table and coffee table. Mining inspiration from Italy“The building [that the apartment is located in] is representative of a very distinctive period in the history of Bilbao’s residential architecture,” says Lara. She and Donezar desperately wanted to preserve and repurpose the apartment's original midcentury elements, including custom woodwork, green Macael marble countertops, wooden doors, and artful window frames.A key reference for the duo at the beginning of the project was Italian architect Luigi Caccia Dominioni’s 1960s Milan apartment. Post-renovation, you can trace Dominioni’s influence in the interior’s unexpected geometric flourishes.In the kitchen, an 1970s-era ceramic vase from the Judith San Quintín antique store sits atop a natural quartzite countertop. The dressing room leads to a shower lined with garnet Zellige tiles. The stool is from Rue Vintage 74. An ever-changing renovation“The renovation doesn’t impose itself on the original architecture,” says Donezar, who wanted her and Lara’s interventions to appear natural and flowing. Although their initial plan was to tear down all the apartment's internal walls, an unexpected discovery led the architects to reevaluate. “We found original herringbone parquet under the carpet that covered the entire floor of the home,” Donezar says. Determined to preserve it, the architects chose to keep most of the original floor plan intact.The former layout, typical of Spanish apartments in the 1960s, boasted a kitchen only accessible through a separate entrance. All the rooms sprouted off of a long hallway. The new owners wanted to preserve the intimate atmosphere of the bedrooms and, conversely, incorporate the kitchen into the home’s living and dining area. One of the few interventions that the architects conducted was converting the principal bedroom and the service entrance into a laundry room and a bathroom, respectively.Mesonero Romano, a Spanish architectural studio, designed the stools in front of the kitchen island. The 1960s Murano glass bowl is from Judith San Quintín. The beech dining chairs are upholstered in gazelle leather from De la Villa Studio (Canica Collections). A lamp by Gabriel Ordeig hangs above the table (Santa & Cole). The painting is by Emeca (Alzueta Gallery). In the study, a marble and chrome-plated steel lamp from Tristán Domecq Casa sits atop a built-in desk. The ceramics on the shelf are German from the 1970s. For the interiors, Donezar and Lara designed a few pieces of furniture, including a custom stained-oak dining table, and hardware elements, like pulls on the sliding glass doors. They also sourced vintage decor from different eras—in the dining room, for example, a 20th-century Japanese copper vase and a pair of Murano vases from the 1980s create an exchange across decades. Another prime example is the green Macael marble shelf in the apartment’s entry. Not only is it practical, it pays homage to the old interior—Donezar and Lara crafted it from an old countertop in the kitchen.Pulls designed by the studio. The architects created this green Macael marble shelf from the old kitchen countertop. Above, an Italian mirror with a frame made of ash wood is from Rue Vintage 74. This Bilbao apartment refers to its past elsewhere, too. Both the green entryway and the reddish oak that comprises the door frames and kitchen nod to the apartment’s original color palette. Garnet Zellige tiles in the principal bathroom refer to the original brick too. Donezar and Lara also leaned into the home’s original geometry—note the many chamfered corners, the octagonal nightstands in the bedroom, and the hexagonal mirror in the entryway. The combination of these unexpected shapes adds up to a sensitive renovation that doesn’t feel too stuffy nor too sterile.The bed, with linens from Zara Home, is flanked by two octagonal nightstands, custom-designed by Donezar Lara. The artwork hanging above the bed is by Martina Arias. This Bilbao apartment renovation was originally published by AD Spain. It was translated by John Newton.