Tatiana Bilbao

Her grandfather was Tomás Bilbao Hospitalet, a Basque-origin architect and politician who fled Spain and settled in Mexico in 1942.

Tatiana Bilbao Spamer (born 1972) is a Mexican architect whose works often merged geometry with nature.

Her practice focuses on sustainable design and social housing.

In 1985 the government was faced with a great need for housing after a major earthquake.

This caused the government to make mass-produced housing with over 2.5 million houses being built in the course of six years.

Bilbao hated seeing developers take land and the identity of Mexico.

So Bilbao met with architects and Infonavit, the federally owned bank that grants massive housing loans, to start reconvening new city centers and creating satellite urban environments.

As Bilbao became more influential different configurations of houses were designed with high resale value.

Bilbao then started designing housing for under 8k for the lower-class which led to her focus on social housing.

She studied architecture at the Universidad Iberoamericana where she obtained her Bachelor of Architecture and Urbanism degree in 1996.

In 1998, Bilbao received an honorable mention and was awarded the best architecture thesis of the year.

Bilbao focused on sustainable design and social housing in her book "A House is Not Just a House".

In this book she said, "We can't forget that housing is a human right. Houses are not just for sale. Houses are for people, and we have to think of them first."

Bilbao's work was influenced by her political interest in Mexico City.

In 1998–99, Bilbao worked as an advisor for Urban Projects at the Urban Housing and Development Department of Mexico City.

During that time, she also worked as advisor of the Secretaría de Desarrollo Urbano y Vivienda del Gobierno del Distrito Federal, a government agency that oversees urban development and housing in Mexico City.

Bilbao co-founded LCM in 1999 which explores uncharted geometries and generates unprecedented spaces.

She founded Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO in 2004 and has completed projects in China, France, the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, among others.

In 2004, Bilbao founded MX.DF along with architects Derek Dellekamp, Arturo Ortiz, and Michel Rojkind.

MX.DF is an urban research center, attending the production of space, its occupation, defense, and control in Mexico City.

Also in 2004, she founded Tatiana Bilbao Estudio, to work on projects in China, Europe and Mexico.

The first project built by her studio was the exhibition pavilion in Jinhua Architecture Park, led and coordinated by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei who selected a group of young architects from around the world to design and develop a large park with a network of pavilions on the shore of the Yiwu River, close to Shanghai.

The exhibition pavilion of Jinhua Architecture Park is one of Bilbao's more famous works.

In 2005, she joined the Architecture and Urbanism career at the Universidad Iberoamericana as a Design professor.

Completed in 2007, this embedded pavilion features multiple levels and strategic blocking.

Her diverse work includes the Botanical Garden in Culiacán, a master plan and open chapel for a Pilgrimage Route in Jalisco, a Biotechnological Center for a Tech Institution, a sustainable housing prototype, and a funeral home.

Bilbao has worked to create low-cost housing to solve Mexico's social housing problem.

So far, Bilbao has built 32 houses for this program which helps low-income individuals afford their own home.

Bilbao was the recipient of the Design Vanguard "Top 10 Emerging Firm" award in 2007.

In 2008, she was appointed visiting professor at the Andrés Bello University, in Santiago de Chile.

Bilbao has been visiting professor at Andres Bello University, Yale School of Architecture, Peter Behrens School of Architecture, and the Rice School of Architecture.

Bilbao taught at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation and was a professor of design at her alma mater, Ibero-American University.

Bilbao's work has been recognized with the Berliner Kunstpreis in 2012, the 2010 Architectural League Emerging Voices, the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture by the LOCUS Foundation in 2014, and the Impact Award 2017 to the Architizer A+Awards Honorees, along with the 2020 Tau Sigma Delta Gold Medal and the 2019 Marcus Prize Award.

Tatiana Bilbao was born in Mexico City into a family of architects.

Representative projects include the Botanical Garden of Culiacán, Sinaloa, the exhibition hall of a park located in Jinhua, China and a prototype of sustainable social housing of 62 m2 with the capacity to duplicate with a cost of 120 thousand Mexican pesos, that was presented at the Chicago Architecture Biennial in 2015, and originally screened in Chiapas, Mexico.

In 2017 Bilbao curated, in collaboration with Gonzalo Ortega, the exhibition Perspectives: Tatiana Bilbao Estudio organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MARCO) in the city of Monterrey, Nuevo León, where their projects produced in the period from 2004 to 2017 were presented.

This sample was also presented at the Amparo Museum in Puebla a year later.

In 2019, the Louisiana Museum in Denmark presented a homonymous exhibition about Bilbao's work within the series "The Architect's Studio", this exhibition belongs to the second edition where internationally renowned architects have participated showing their architectural career.

In this exhibition, you can see how Mexican culture and traditions play an essential role in her work as well as her commitment to social and sustainable architecture.

Likewise, there is a collaboration with the National Museum of Art of Mexico City, MUNAL, and works by artists such as José María Velasco and Dr. Atl will be presented.