ARCHITECTURE: Tatiana Bilbao

Today is the occasion to bear in mind Tatiana Bilbao, (2/8/1972- ), the Mexican architect whose innovative works often merged geometry with nature. She has become noted worldwide as one of the most thought-provoking Mexican architects, not only due to her designs but also her efforts to promote the discipline as a means of social and environmental improvement.

By Efi Michalarou

Tatiana Bilbao shared her interest in architecture and urban planning with a number of family members. One of her grandfathers was minister of urban development for the Spanish government before Francisco Franco came to power, and he moved his family to Mexico. Bilbao’s own predilection for architecture was evident from her girlhood, when she took the gift of a Barbie doll as an excuse to build a city in which Barbie could live. She later attended the Universidad Iberoamericana (UIA, also called Ibero), a Jesuit university in Mexico City, where she took a degree in architecture and urbanism (1996), having become passionate about the power of architecture to transform. In 1998–99 Bilbao worked as an adviser for urban projects at the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing, Mexico City. Somewhat discouraged by the bureaucratic nature of that work, she struck out on her own, cofounding an architectural think tank called Laboratorio de la Ciudad de México (LCM) in 1999 and an urban research centre, MXDF, in 2004. In the latter year she also started her own firm, Tatiana Bilbao S.C. In 2005 she was appointed professor of design at her alma mater. Bilbao’s first project was a collaboration with artist Gabriel Orozco on his beach house near Puerto Escondido. In the following years she honed a distinctly interdisciplinary approach, working with artists such as Ai Weiwei on projects in China and Spain, as well as in Mexico. In Sinaloa state, for example, she worked within the Culiacán Botanical Garden (to install art works and necessary service buildings. She organized the gardens into an organic whole by connecting the natural and built environments with pathways inspired by the branches of a tree. Another of her projects for Culiacán was a multiuse biotechnology facility, Bioinnova (completed in 2012), that Bilbao and her team designed for the Monterrey Institute of Technology’s campus there. Like Bilbao’s other work, Bioinnova was inspired by a mix of geometry and nature—in this case, the form of a tree. Rather than producing a standard Modernist glass-and-steel block, Bilbao stacked four identical rectangular floors and shifted them in relation to one another to create overhangs and terraces; she also rotated one floor 90°, completely changing its orientation. The resulting staggered structure was functional as well as eye-catching, both inside and out. The concrete interior walls that formed the internal structure (or “tree trunk”) of Bioinnova were painted a different sensuous tropical color on each floor. The glass outer walls too were a different tint on each floor, and the mesh that covered the facade of the rotated floor further set it apart. The whole was pleasing and well-integrated, an inspiration for viewer and user alike. At the Chicago Architecture Biennial 2015, Bilbao presented a “flexible building prototype,” using modular components that could be adjusted to fit the number of inhabitants but could also be expanded by units to meet the needs of a growing family. Materials and layouts could also be varied to suit climate. The design was commissioned by the Mexican government to help allay the country’s housing shortage with low-cost solutions. Bilbao was the recipient of various awards, and in 2010 she was named an Emerging Voice by the Architectural League of New York. In addition to the projects mentioned, Bilbao built a number of arresting houses of various scales and shapes, a funeral home, a pavilion, a music hall and sports centre, and structures along a pilgrimage route.