Tatiana Bilbao

Tatiana Bilbao, founder of Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO, is one of the leading and most thought-provoking Mexican voices. Following her profession since the beginning as a means to improve social well-being, she has never renounced this aspiration. Passionate of her native country’s culture and traditions she has always strived to implement local construction techniques, regional materials and resources, combined with her ability to be modern. Author of projects in Mexico,China, Europe and the United States, she has received many awards and her works, internationally published in the most renowned magazines, have been exhibited in prestigious museums and galleries, as at the Centre Pompidou, that in 2010 acquired three of her projects for their permanent architecture collection. Our conversation focused on her intense militant involvement in a community-driven design, in the attempt to offer living spaces that everyone could adapt and shape according his own needs, wishes and expectations. A bottom-up architecture that aims to create a dialogue with the users, with the hope to give everyone the possibility to express their own identity.She will talk also about a recent housing project in Monterrey, that sees her proposing new patterns and models in the effort to modify dysfunctional tendencies evident in the high residential sector. Part of our talk has been reserved to some other projects: ‘Culiacán Botanical Garden’, Mexico, emblematic example of her will to foster a spontaneous appropriation of the place by people, ‘Research Center Of The Sea’, in Mazatlán, Mexico, an immersive dialogue with nature and ‘Pilgrim’s Route’, a 117 kilometers long religious, devotional walk, project for which Tatiana has provided a master plan and two specific site-installations, inviting other 7 architects and artists to participate with their own creations. And in conclusion I liked to add my consideration about her pragmatic and, at the same time, poetic realization, able to express a kind of magical realism.