The work of Tatiana Bilbao Estudio is known for material experimentation
and contextual sensibility. A lesser known aspect, is the importance
of the landscape dimension in the studio’s work. Since its establishment
in 2004, the studio’s work has been grounded in the concept of the
other, incorporating marginalized populations that reigning political,
economic, and intellectual oligarchies seldom acknowledge. Parks and
gardens, once the spaces of the privileged have been the works through
which the studio’s landscape work seeks to incorporate the other,
conceptualizing recreation and urban leisure as key tenants to a healthy
public life. The concept of landscape in the studio’s work is expanded
from its association merely with green spaces and pristine nature, to
the environments constructed by groups or individuals of their
ideological, historical, and imagined existence. The Botanical Garden in
Culiacán aimed to reactivate the public realm in a city whose social
fabric had been damaged due to the presence of organized crime and
narco trafficking. Subsequent work, like the ongoing construction, in
Lyon La Confluence seeks to expand Lyon’s urban identity by reclaiming
areas previously designated for industrial use. Upcoming work such as
the Museum of Contemporary Art in Arévalo, Spain attempts to reinterpret
the city’s historic legacy as a platform it can use to become a
regional cultural center. This discussion will look at the past,
current, and future work of TBE in redefining landscape which
incorporate the other, examining how the work of the studio constantly
aims to negotiate between the project and its context and how they
engage.
Tatiana Bilbao
Tatiana Bilbao Estudio
Through
a multicultural and multidisciplinary office, the work of Tatiana
Bilbao tries to understand the place that surrounds us in order to
translate its rigid codes into architecture. It tries to regenerate
spaces in order to humanize them as a reaction to global capitalism,
opening up niches for cultural and economic development. Her work
includes a Botanical Garden, a master plan and open chapel for a
Pilgrimage Route, a Biotechnological Center for a Tech Institution, a
house that is built with 8,000 USD, and a Funeral Home. Tatiana was the
recipient of the Kunstpreis Berlin in 2012, the Global Award for
Sustainable Architecture Prize in 2014 as well as being named an
Emerging Voice by the Architecture League of NY in 2010. Her work is
part of the collection of the Center George Pompidou in Paris, France,
and the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. Has
been visiting professor at Yale School of Architecture, Rice School of
Architecture and Columbia GSAPP. Her work has been published in A+U, GA House, Domus, and The New York Times, among others.
