Ciro: Warm Minimalist Apartment Living in the Heart of Bilbao
Ciro anchors a renovated apartment in Bilbao, Spain, with a quiet sense of order shaped by designer Andrea Diego. The project turns a conventional layout into an open, warm home where the kitchen, dining, and living areas connect with ease, while a concealed threshold leads to more private rooms. Calm materials, custom elements, and a restrained palette define a dwelling that favors balance, comfort, and everyday clarity.
Soft daylight moves across clay-textured walls and pale stone as the apartment opens from the entry toward the kitchen and living area. Wood, fabric, and mineral finishes work together to keep the rooms calm and legible.
This renovation of an apartment in Bilbao, Spain, by Andrea Diego focuses on a functional, warm home organized around daily life. The plan favors connection between kitchen, dining room, and living room, and the interior palette sustains that connection through recurring materials and gentle color. Every choice of wood, stone, textile, and plaster supports the goal of order, comfort, and a sense of centered living.
Shaping An Open Core
The former compartmentalized layout gives way to an open core where cooking, eating, and lounging share a continuous volume. Kitchen fronts in wood combine with lighter lower cabinets and a natural stone countertop, creating a clear horizontal rhythm that ties the room together. At the center, the island acts as both work surface and gathering point, with its material continuity reinforcing the visual calm of the shared area. Modulated wooden friezes and the repeated stone edge knit cabinetry, island, and surrounding walls into one clear composition.
Concealed Thresholds And Order
A hidden door set within the vertical kitchen panels marks the transition to the intimate zone. Its surface aligns with the surrounding millwork so the passage reads as part of the wall rather than a separate element. This strategy keeps visual noise low in the social rooms, where cooking and conversation already bring movement. It also underlines the project’s emphasis on quiet order, separating public and private realms without interrupting the continuous planes of wood and clay mortar.
Crafted Dining And Living Pieces
In the dining area, a custom curved bench upholstered in green velvet resolves the corner and softens the geometry. The curve gathers people around a micro-cement table with rounded lines, while art by Teresa J. Cuevas anchors the composition with color and weight. Related works by the same artist continue into the kitchen, so art and furniture speak the same chromatic language across the main rooms. Nearby, the living room’s made-to-measure shelving in natural wood and stone combines storage and display, keeping objects close without crowding the room.
Texture, Color, And Calm
Clay mortar on the walls runs through the apartment, giving a matte, tactile surface that catches light softly. This continuous finish deepens the warm character of the interior and improves environmental comfort while avoiding glare. In the bedroom, earth-toned textiles, an upholstered headboard, and measured wooden details maintain the same calm register set in the main rooms. Bathrooms bring in textured ceramic cladding and matte gold fixtures, adding relief and nuance without departing from the sober, balanced palette.
Ciro ultimately reads as a home organized around clarity, from open social areas to withdrawn private rooms. Repeated materials, crafted joinery, and tuned color keep each room connected yet distinct. As light moves across clay, stone, and fabric through the day, the apartment holds to its central promise of calm, ordered living.
Photography by Erlantz Biderbost
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