Social housing - a total of 16 housing units of 52 m2 each and a public space of 27,000m2 - in Acuña, Mexico, 2015
© photograph: Iwan Baan
This exhibition provides an insight into the work of Mexican architect Tatiano Bilbao (born 1972 in Mexico City). For the first time in Austria, she is presenting her eponymous office, it’s approach and philosophy, along with their most important building projects.
Tatiana Bilbao Estudio researches and interprets the historical culture and building traditions of Mexico, and the immediate context of projects. The exhibition explores various facets of ‘landscape’ that influence and feed into the studio’s work, from natural or urban scapes, to the social and cultural. Bilbao’s work is highly diverse and frequently interdisciplinary, produced in collaboration with other architects, landscape architects, artists and local residents: from a pilgrimage trail in Mexico via the Botanical Garden in Culiacán, to housing developments. The analysis of the landscape and social conditions forms the basis for projects as large as an aquarium in Mazatlán or as small as a post disaster house design in Acuña.
The local cultural, artistic and building tradition — involving for instance the use of rammed earth — plays a key role in Bilbao’s works. The basic idea is that architecture should become the platform for anyone to create their own existence. “When you come from a country where many people have very little in the way of economic resources, you are used to not wasting them.” (Tatiana Bilbao)
On show in the exhibition are models of significant projects within a hand-drawn context, as well as large scale installations, complimented by a cabinet of curiosities filled with sketches, collages and samples of raw materials that invite visitors to glimpse into the complex working process of the office.
The exhibition is a cooperation with the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark.