Tatiana Bilbao: Creating Spaces with Relevance Means “Enhancing Someone’s Life”

In the second film from this year’s series of PLANE—SITE‘s Time-Space-Existence videos, Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao shares her philosophy of how architecture should be designed with the user’s experience in mind, rather than for standalone aesthetic qualities. In the video she discusses how architects should to some extent let go of their artistic intentions for a more practical approach to serve the needs of people, discussing how architecture has become detached from its key purpose over the last fifty years due to the influence of capitalism.

Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO strives to return to the principals of architecture. As Bilbao describes, it is about “making places and spaces, by people, for people,” enhancing how a building is lived in and leaving a trace of those who built it. The practice maintains the ethos of labor-intensive, handmade buildings, providing much-needed jobs in Mexico by trying not to replace people with machines—and ultimately giving the final result a raw energy.

After recent projects in collaboration with the artists Ai Weiwei and Gabriel Orozco, her practice has risen to become one of the most distinguished architecture firms in Mexico. Last year, Bilbao was also put forward for the Architectural Review (AR) 2016 Woman Architect of the Year, alongside other renowned names including Charlotte Skene Catling, Jeanne Gang and Kazuyo Sejima. This interview with Tatiana Bilbao is one of many commissioned by the GAA Foundation to highlight the voices and opinions of prominent architects in the lead up to the Time-Space-Existence exhibition due to open at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale this May.