L10 号房屋丨西班牙比斯开丨Garmendia Cordero Arquitectos

L10 House updates a 1970s single-family home on the coast of Spain, rethinking how it meets the Cantabrian Sea and southern light. Garmendia Cordero Arquitectos work with the original structure’s quiet intelligence, rotating internal axes and loosening partitions while keeping the building’s essential character intact. The house shifts from a compartmentalized layout toward generous, flexible rooms that support a warmer, more connected way of living today.

Sea air moves across the garden and under the long eaves before reaching the thick walls of the old 1970s house. Inside, light slides in from the south, touching new level changes and long sightlines that thread through rooms once locked into a rigid grid.

This is a single-family house on the coast of Bizkaia in Spain, reworked by Garmendia Cordero Arquitectos as a contemporary dwelling without erasing its origin. The project takes the existing 1970s structure—overseen in its day by Secundino Zuazo—and tests how far it can bend toward present needs without breaking. Adaptive reuse becomes the core argument: respect a strong architectural shell, then pivot its interior life through plan, sequence and subtle shifts in orientation.

Reworking The Shell

The original neighborhood gathers around brick facades and tiled roofs, yet this house already stands apart thanks to Zuazo’s adjustments to plan and roof geometry. Where neighbors open their L-shaped floor plans toward the sea, this one turns inward to the south, catching light and shielding itself from harsh northern winds. The roof ridge refuses to twist with the plan, extending a single sloping edge that drapes over the full footprint, so the renovation works with a generous, protective canopy rather than against it. That disciplined envelope, with its subtle deviations from the norm, gives the current architects a robust framework for change.

Rotating The Axis

Inside, the most decisive move is not a wall but an angle. The former layout divided daily life between two rectangles, each with assigned uses, resulting in a compartmentalized sequence of rooms. Garmendia Cordero Arquitectos discard this split and draw a new main axis by linking the four corners of the existing roofs, allowing the interior to sit differently within the same perimeter. That rotation marks the distinction between the enduring architecture and the more temporal layer of interior work, making the contrast between permanence and change legible rather than hidden.

Stepped Rooms In Sequence

Level changes now choreograph daily life. From the kitchen, movement drifts to the dining area, then passes through a study toward the living zone without abrupt thresholds. Short rises and drops in floor level hint at shifts in use, so the house feels continuous yet clearly organized (a simple step can frame a pause). Beyond the living area, an enclosed porch mediates between interior warmth and the covered outdoor area, before the sequence finally lets out into the garden. Each transition is physical and visual, giving the family a series of smaller episodes rather than one large, undifferentiated hall.

Vertical Links And Retreats

A slender, sensual staircase from the original house stays in place as a vertical hinge. It stitches the flowing main level to the quieter bedroom zone above and to the more informal lower floor below. That lower level becomes a territory for two young inhabitants, alongside pragmatic rooms such as gym, laundry and garage, contained yet connected by the same stair. By retaining this element, the architects acknowledge the strength of the prior structure while letting new programs coil around it.

Opening To Greenery

Permeability is the other constant thread. The reworked ground level allows views and circulation to slip toward the exuberantly green exterior, tightening the bond between interior and garden more than before. Wide connections to the covered outdoor area and the final lawn extend daily routines outward, so comfort and cosiness sit alongside a strong awareness of the surrounding landscape. Warmth here means people and light, not retreat from the world.

In the end, the project treats the 1970s structure as a long-term companion rather than a relic. Architecture remains steady while uses, finishes and alignments update to accommodate new patterns of living. The result is a house that remembers its own past yet absorbs change with ease, showing how a clear, durable framework can welcome many lives over time.