Tatiana Bilbao (Mexico City, 1972) is a prominent figure in the contemporary landscape of Mexican architecture. Her practice shifts from small-scale projects to large-scale urban interventions.

Since her first occupation as advisor for the Urban Project at the Urban Housing and Development Department of the Municipality of Mexico City, to her latest publication A House Is Not Just a House: Projects on Housing (Columbia University Press, New York 2018), the common thread of her research has always been oriented towards finding new strategies for inhabited solutions. As a starting point of her process, whether is a low budget intervention or a luxury project, she tries to find simple and low cost solutions to overcome the constrains embedded in each context. 

For her Ajijic house project (Jalostitlán, Lago de Chapala, Mexico, 2010), in order to comply with the client’s budget, she tested the potentiality of rammed earth, and explored the possibility of applying it to the whole building, from the structure to the finishes. The materiality of architecture is an important feature of her work as confirmed by the mirrored glass house built inside the forest in Monterrey.

Throughout her carrier, Bilbao has predominantly explored the theme of housing, tackling the topic from different points of view. Considering the house a major social concern in Mexico, she has worked alongside administrations and researched incessantly on this topic.

At Chicago Architecture Biennial 2015 she presented a prototype of affordable houses starting from an 8,000 dollars construction budget; the modularity of the project allows flexibility of use, reaffirming once more the political role of architecture in fragile contexts.