TAYKO BILBAO
The building
A century of industrial architecture in the heart of the city
Bilbao is a city that has reinvented itself without erasing its past: the estuary, industry and architecture remain etched in its buildings for those who know how to read them. One such building is ours, right on Calle Ribera in the Casco Viejo, overlooking the estuary that shaped this city.
TAYKO BILBAO
The building
A century of industrial architecture in the heart of the city
Bilbao is a city that has reinvented itself without erasing its past: the estuary, industry and architecture remain etched in its buildings for those who know how to read them. One such building is ours, right on Calle Ribera in the Casco Viejo, overlooking the estuary that shaped this city.
The building turned 100 in 2024, and its history explains why we fell in love with it. Built in 1924 by the architect Adolfo Gil Lezama and commissioned by the merchant José María Erice, it was the fourth building in the whole of Spain to be constructed entirely from concrete. In Bilbao, the city of iron, someone dared to use the material of the future, and that pioneering gesture continues to support the building a century later.
Its location was no accident either. Situated beside the estuary, in what was then Bilbao’s busiest shopping district, the building combined residential and commercial spaces with features that were, at the time, almost a science-fiction luxury: a lift, central heating and running hot water. It was the modernity of industrial Bilbao translated into domestic architecture.
Its ground floor holds another memory: a commercial one. This is where José María Erice’s hardware shop once operated, and where the Zubicaray department store opened – a place that several generations of Bilbao residents still remember. The sign that remains on the building is not merely decoration: it is the surname of an era.
The restoration was based on a simple principle: to respect the building’s existing character. The historic structure coexists with a contemporary interior design in which concrete, metal and brick are left exposed and interact with the modern design. The industrial character has not been recreated; it has been preserved.
Its ground floor holds another memory: a commercial one. This is where José María Erice’s hardware shop once operated, and where the Zubicaray department store opened – a place that several generations of Bilbao residents still remember. The sign that remains on the building is not merely decoration: it is the surname of an era.
The restoration was based on a simple principle: to respect the building’s existing character. The historic structure coexists with a contemporary interior design in which concrete, metal and brick are left exposed and interact with the modern design. The industrial character has not been recreated; it has been preserved.
Even the name comes from the building itself. Tayko is derived from “taikonaut” and pays tribute to the astronaut who, for years, dominated the collective imagination of the former warehouses – a figure many people from Bilbao remember from their childhood. We felt it was only right that the building should give its name to the hotel, rather than the other way round.
More than just a hotel, Tayko Bilbao offers a way to experience the city’s architectural history from within: a hundred years of concrete, commerce and the estuary, all within the most distinctive building in the Old Town.
