Antzasti

Antzasi etimology: Arantza-sagasti. Toponymic name: place of blackthorns and apple trees.

As the way of life changes, the house changes too

The Antzasti farmhouse is an example of traditional Arratia architecture. The ground floor was used as a stable, where the tools and animals were kept and, in turn, the animals warmed the living quarters that were on the first floor. The rear of the first floor was used as a hay loft to feed the animals on the farm. The attic or top floor was used to store and dry the crops.

Our project is based on the family home. Through this concept, the home in which our ancestors were born, grew up and lived together truly reflects the atmosphere of this period of time, along with their habits and customs, in short, their history. The family home “etxea” is not merely a building or a space. It represents much more than that. It is from this perspective on which our proposal is based. As the way of life changes, the house changes too.

It is in this space where these two worlds are repesented; the rural and the urban at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, in such a way that the farmhouse represents the traditional way of life and it has been decorated as a place that has been lived in. The rest of the space is devoted to representing the modern urban life of Bilbao.  In this way, each room from the traditional house has been represented in urban life. We will compare a traditional farmhouse kitchen with a dining room typical of the city, a bedroom representing traditional life and a bedroom portraying modernity, a kitchen with a fireplace and a kitchen with a coal stove.

This exhibition simply aims to represent a synthesis of two ways of life and of seeing and understanding the world. Our purpose is none other than to merely show the atmosphere of this period of time. Obviously, there were other ways of life between these two worlds, as well as those who lived on the streets or in self-built houses, in shacks or in barracks during these hard years of the industralization. However, we have focused on briefly explaining the cultural and sociological change that occured in this period of history in the broadest and most comprehensible way and we have chosen two extremes, but always with the home as a reference. Undoubtedly, this led to a before and after in our recent history.

Izan direlako gara, garelako izango dira – We are our past and we are the future