For “family” reasons I often travel to Bilbao, and today I will tell you about one architectural work that I discovered in one of my last visits, it is about the Alhóndiga Bilbao.
At center of Bilbao is this huge building, built by architect Ricardo Bastida in 1909, that until the 70s functioned as a wine and spirits warehouse, and that has recently become in accultural, knowledge, sports and leisure center.
"The Municipal Alhóndiga" was the pfirst reinforced concrete building built in Bilbao, ten years after its first inauguration it burned, Although that fact did not stop its activity as a distributor of Vizcaya wines, it was in the seventies when it became obsolete and its decline came.
He was uninhabited for many years and after almost a decade of works y three million euros for its rehabilitation at the hands of the designer Philippe Starck, this modernist building was inaugurated on May 18. Construction measures 43.000 square meters, occupies a whole block from the center of Bilbao and consists inside 43 columns of various movements, styles and materials, in his rehabilitation only the façade of the original Alhóndiga has been preserved and the interior has been redesigned again.
For the moment, the Alhóndiga consists of: swimming pools, gym, cinemas, restaurants, shops and exhibition halls ... and little by little other spaces are being inaugurated (library, media library, solarium ... etc.)
