Wool, Beer, and Wild Woods: Rethinking Territorial Regeneration Through Design
Bilbao BBK Live is a renowned music festival held annually on Mount Kobetamendi in Bilbao, a privileged natural setting that welcomes over one hundred thousand people and features up to 12 stages.
Since 2015, Zuloark has been collaborating with Last Tour to design the festival’s scenographies, always seeking new ways to implement sustainable materials and processes to create unique spaces.
For the 2024 edition, we are taking a step further in rethinking how stages can not only reduce their environmental impact but also become drivers of territorial regeneration, working alongside artists, artisans, biomaterial producers, and carpenters from the Bilbao region.
A Wool Jacket for Txiki
For the design of the Txiki stage, we collaborated with Mutur Beltz, a local cooperative that works with wool from native sheep of the Carranza Valley in Vizcaya. This is an underutilized material, often considered waste, for which this initiative seeks new applications.
We proposed a modular solution using frames made of jute and knotted wool. This way, the wool does not need to be processed and can be reused later.
With this system, we built a stage using a natural, locally sourced material, where artists like Mulatu Astatke, Mujeres, and Shygirl performed. This initiative supports the preservation of native sheep breeds and traditional shepherding practices.
A Beer Stage for a Beer Brand
At San Miguel, a stage sponsored by the namesake brand, we took on the challenge of building a stage for a beer brand using… beer. More precisely, waste from the beer industry.
Bagasse is a byproduct that makes up 85 percent of the waste generated in the production of this beverage. To give it a new purpose, we collaborated with Mad Materials, a project dedicated to innovation and the development of biomaterials.
With them, we designed a system of bio-canvas scales made from bagasse and algae, attached to vertical load straps. Each scale was individually crafted, covering a surface of nearly 100 m²—forming a skin-like texture reminiscent of snakes and serpents from local mythology.
The Wild Woods Return
This year, the “wild woods” couldn’t be left out—a decorative approach in which we reuse wood from previous editions and festivals to create new designs and construction solutions year after year.
Together with local carpenters and suppliers, we designed a geometric system based on basic wooden profiles. This design allows the wood to be transformed and reused in a completely new way each year. The system is applied both to the access portico—a tunnel that welcomed thousands of visitors daily—and to the main stage, Nagusia.
The scenographies of Bilbao BBK Live 2024 thus become a space for collaboration with artisans, innovators, and local materials, demonstrating how design can drive territorial regeneration.