Vintage Art Deco Restaurant in Basque Garden
Location: Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain. GFA: 600 sqm.
Architectural concept
Basque Country garden tradition
This project invited our studio to reimagine a singular early-1990s estate on the forested slopes of Artxanda hill as a destination dining experience - one that honours the layered heritage of the Basque Country garden tradition while introducing a contemporary sculptural language into a composition of stone, timber, and wrought iron. The result is an architecture that does not impose itself upon the landscape but grows from it, as naturally as the magnolias and camellias that frame every view. A luminous geometric pavilion - faceted, white, and softly backlit - anchors the garden court as both arrival threshold and night-time landmark, its folded planes echoing the origami logic of Art Deco ornament translated into structural textile membrane.
Spatial organisation
The main building, rising across ground and first floors to a combined area of approximately 411 sqm, presents its most generous face toward the south and east - where a Victorian-style glazed gallery wraps the lower facade in a continuous colonnade of fixed-light vitreous panels supported on stone dwarf walls and a delicate wrought-iron armature. This gallery dissolves the boundary between interior dining room and exterior terrace, allowing guests to inhabit an intermediate climate zone that is sheltered from Atlantic rain yet generously open to garden views. Above, a cantilevered first-floor balcony - clad in exposed fired brick in the caravista tradition - commands the garden court with the quiet authority of a theatrical loggia. The outdoor dining courtyard, paved in irregular slate flags laid over a grass-jointed Basque slate cobblestone field, extends the restaurant floor into the open air across a surface of approximately 800 sqm of landscaped grounds.
Materials and climate
Basque sandstone
Our studio selected materials that speak the geological and craft vocabulary of the Basque region without nostalgia. The facades read as a dialogue between rendered white lime plaster and rusticated Basque sandstone - the stone concentrated at corners, plinths, arcade piers, and entrance archways, where its warm ochre grain catches the low Atlantic light of early evening. Interior joinery follows the regional oak timber tradition: deep-set window frames with double-glazed oval lights, stair balustrades, and ceiling boarding all worked in solid local oak with a lightly oiled finish that deepens with seasonal humidity cycles. Wrought-iron balustrading on both balconies is finished in a dark patinated treatment that references the ironwork craft heritage of Bilbao's industrial past.
Bioclimatic strategy
Bilbao's oceanic climate - Cfb classification, annual rainfall of 1,200 mm, summer peaks of 20 to 25 degrees Celsius, and winter lows of 5 to 10 degrees - demanded a passive strategy centred on moisture management and thermal retention rather than cooling. The ventilated facade system applied to the upper rendered walls creates a continuous air cavity that draws moisture away from the structural core and prevents interstitial condensation through the six to seven months of the heating season. The glazed east-south gallery functions as a passive solar buffer, trapping heat gain during mild spring and autumn service periods and shielding the main dining room from prevailing south-westerly rain. Thermal mass is concentrated in the stone plinth walls and slate floor slabs, which absorb daytime warmth and release it steadily through evening dinner service.
Energy and sustainability
hydronic underfloor heating
The energy concept aligns with Spain's CTE DB-HE requirements and draws on locally sourced renewable fuels. A biomass pellet boiler - fed from regional forestry by-product supply chains - provides primary heat to a hydronic underfloor heating circuit embedded beneath the stone floor slabs throughout the ground-floor dining areas. A reversible air-to-water heat pump supplements the system during shoulder seasons and provides precise zone control for the glazed gallery space. Given Bilbao's modest solar resource of approximately 1,200 kWh per kWp per year, photovoltaic provision is limited to a discreet rooftop array sized for lighting and low-energy kitchen equipment loads only.
Landscape
The six-month outdoor dining season - May through October - shaped every decision in the garden court. Planting is drawn entirely from the Atlantic coastal planting palette: camellia, hydrangea, magnolia, boxwood parterres, evergreen fern colonies, and mature bamboo groves that provide windbreak and acoustic softening along the eastern boundary. String lights woven between the existing tree canopy create a suspended ceiling of warm light after dusk, extending the usable evening period without mechanical glare. The sculptural membrane pavilion serves as a covered outdoor room during light rain, its translucent panels glowing from within like a paper lantern placed among the trees.
In the end, luxury reveals itself not in excess but in the precise calibration of stone, light, and living green - and in the silence that settles over a garden table when everything is exactly right.
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