Tomás Bilbao by Tatiana Bilbao

My grandfather was born in Bilbao in 1890 and died in Mexico in 1954. It was there that he took refuge when he was persecuted for his political idea(l)s. My grandfather was, for me, the deputy mayor, the director, the minister without portfolio, the politician who had fought without giving up for what he believed was best for his city and for his country. My grandfather was always for me a man of integrity and a “notable architect.”¹

Among those of us who work in architecture, we often talk about maintenance, but rarely about care. Perhaps because that word—care—refers to other territories: to gardens, to bodies, to the work of those who sustain daily life. Caring implies care that is not closed or concluded, that does not respond to the logic of a project. Caring is a constant work: slow, insistent, silent, sustained over time.²

My grandfather was born in Bilbao 136 years ago and died in Mexico 72 years ago. During that time, I have understood that buildings keep stories and show the lives that cross them. They are transformed when they are inhabited: they adapt, wear out, correct themselves, are filled with gestures. Life messes them up and completes them. That’s why a building doesn’t end when it’s built. It starts later: when someone enters, when doors are opened and closed, when they cook, clean, discuss, stay: they are taken care of. It begins in that encounter when everyday life meets the form defined by architecture.

It is in that way of looking, where I found a way to get closer to my grandfather. In the buildings he designed, in what ways they have changed, and in what ways they have resisted, I began to recognize something about him that was not in the stories or in the positions. Walking through them, seeing how they have been lived in, how they have been cared for—or neglected—has been another way of listening to their story. It is those buildings, crossed by time and by other lives, that have been completing the memory for me of who that “notable architect” was.

—Tatiana Bilbao

Luis Asín

The photographic series by Luis Asín provides a contemporary look at the buildings designed by Tomás Bilbao throughout his career. Through a documentary work developed through observation and proximity, the photographs record the permanence of architecture, as well as the transformations that time, the city, and its inhabitants imprint on it.

Luis Asín’s photography focuses on the traces of everyday life: the gestures of those who inhabit these spaces, the modifications accumulated over the years, the aging materials, and the ways in which each place continues to adapt to new ways of living. In these images, architecture appears as a living organism, whose permanence only acquires meaning through the use, memory, and experience of those who travel and inhabit it.

Developed from visits and conversations with residents, the series reveals an attentive observation of details and the relationships that are built between people and the spaces they occupy. The transformation of cities and ways of living is thus manifested in everyday and seemingly minimal elements, capable of showing how architecture evolves along with the social and urban context that surrounds it. This photographic series reveals spaces that continue to accumulate lives, stories, and meanings over generations.

IWAN BAAN

The work of photographer Iwan Baan is presented in dialogue with the archival material of Tomás Bilbao’s projects. Through this intersection between contemporary photography and original documents—plans, drawings, and records—an expanded reading of each work is proposed, capable of placing it in its origin and in its present.

Baan’s photographs look at these projects as part of a continuum. His camera records how they are inserted into everyday life and how they are in dialogue with the transformations of the city. In contrast, the archive allows us to return to the initial intentions of each project, revealing the ideas that shaped them and the imaginaries that accompanied them in their conception.

The dialogue between these two timeframes—that of the project and that of its built life—reveals changes, cares, additions, repairs, and even signs of resignification as new layers of reading that enrich the understanding of its architecture. In this superposition of temporalities, Tomás Bilbao’s buildings can be understood as structures capable of absorbing transformation without losing the persistence of his original ideas.

Iwan Baan’s photography accompanies the archive, activating and expanding it, proposing a way of looking in which architecture is understood as a continuous process between memory, use, and time.

Models by Tatiana Bilbao Estudio

EXHIBITION CREDITS

Venue: COAVN Bizkaia, Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos Vasco-Navarro
Location: Alameda Mazarredo, 69 - 1º, 48009 Bilbao
Dates: May 27, 2026—September 11, 2026

Tatiana Bilbao Estudio
Principal: Tatiana Bilbao
Partners: Tatiana Bilbao, Catia Bilbao, Juan Pablo Benlliure, Alba Cortés, Mariano Castillo, and Soledad Rodríguez
Project director: Alba Cortés
Curation, research, and management: Xabier Artola, Isaac Solis Rosas
Design team: Natalia Lira, Andrea González, Bjarke-Christopher Wedler, Ivan Aguilar, Faris Ginny, and Nina Serrano
Archive: Ángela Silva
Model shop: Victor Castañeda
Press and communication: Sofía Martínez

Photography: Iwan Baan and Luis Asín
Models: Tatiana Bilbao Estudio
Book: Ignacio M. San Ginés Vizcaíno
Organization: BIA, Bilbao Bizkaia Architecture. Premio BIA 2026. COAVN
Sponsors: HABIC and Panoramah!
Acknowledgments: Azkoitia Udala and Getxo Kultura