Mexico City-based architecture firm Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO presented its design for the Casa Dragones Tequila Tasting Room, which took place at Art Basel Miami Beach from December 1st to 3rd in the second year of its multi-year partnership. Founded in 2009 by Bertha Gonzalez Nieves to create tasting tequilas produced with the utmost care and expertise, Casa Dragones has become the first tequila brand to be an Official Partner of Art Basel Miami.
Staged stories on community and identity, ephemeral architecture showed that in 2022 it doesn't have to be permanent to be powerful. A direct and popped-up public installation can shift from preparation to action, reclaiming and defining what makes a community unique. Highlighting installations to acknowledge linguistic diversity in NYC, a giant table to celebrate culinary in Barcelona, and a large-scale net in Dubai to represent the local culture, among others, these initiatives seek to understand ways in which local and regional expressions can help cities to be more equal and diverse.
Globalization has connected the world boundaryless. While it has also made information more accessible, it has led to homogeneity and identity crisis at melding unique societies and cultural expressions. Cultural differences are undeniable as globalization grows. Hence, as architecture produces common living standards, it can also highlight singularities. Festivals, installations, and pavilions, 2022 was the year to express local memories to be recognized and celebrated, setting Community and identity as central topics in ephemeral architecture throughout the year.
The “Women in Architecture “exhibition by the Danish Architecture Center aims to open the conversation about women in architecture and showcase their often overlooked, yet substantial contributions to the field. The historical part of the exhibition celebrates untold stories and forgotten accomplishments of women in Denmark from the 1920s to the 1970s. The exhibition also gives the floor to contemporary architects, asking them to share their experiences as architects in Denmark today. To further explore this position, Tatiana Bilbao Estudio, Siv Helene Stangeland from Helen & Hard , and Ensamble Studio explore the theme of the event inspired by Virginia Woolf’s 1929 essay, “A Room of One’s Own”, in which she asserts that women must be financially independent if they are to be able to create works of significance. They must have a room of their own, in both a physical and metaphorical sense.
Mexican firm Tatiana Bilbao Estudio has unveiled Botániqo, its new project in collaboration with the Ecuadorian firm Uribe Schwarzkopf in Quito, Ecuador. With over 12,000 km2, the project will cede 4,000 km2 to create a new transportation hub expected to service over 60,000 people per day, in addition to the creation of green space around the residential units.
Mexico City's Secretary of Public Works and Services announced a collaboration with some of the country's most distinguished architectural minds in a move to add on to the capital's educational and cultural infrastructure. The project centers on the planning and building of 25 new Points of Innovation, Freedom, Art, Education, and Knowledge (PILARES), an initiative implemented by Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum.
Jacques Herzog Meets Tatiana Bilbao: Everybody Deserves a Decent Home
Jacques Herzog met with Tatiana Bilbao at the Herzog & de Meuron’s studio in Basel, Switzerland on May 2019, and got to discuss the Mexican architect’s projects and architectural approach. The two long-time friends and prizewinning architects talked about the defining moments in their friendship and the advice of Herzog that improved Bilbao’s method.
Award-winning architect Tatiana Bilbao spoke in an interview released by Louisiana Channel about her frustrations with today’s concept of sustainability in architecture. Living in Mexico, which Bilbao describes as a “country with no resources,” she states that people are accustomed to not wasting resources and that “sustainability” is a natural part of daily life. “I hate the word ‘sustainability’ because I think it has become a word that can qualify a type of architecture, and for me it should be embedded.”
As part of a generation of designers that have, in recent years, put Mexico on the map, Tatiana Bilbao is an architect that is increasingly part of the profession’s global consciousness. But, while some Mexican architects have made their mark with spectacular architecture following the international trend of “iconic” architecture, Bilbao opted instead for a more people-focused approach. In this interview, the latest in Vladimir Belogolovsky’s “City of Ideas” series, Bilbao explains how she got into this type of community-building architecture, her thoughts on architectural form, and her ambitions for the future.
Vladimir Belogolovsky:The more I talk to architects of your generation or my generation, the more it becomes apparent that architecture has absolutely no boundaries. In other words, architecture is not just about buildings. More and more, architecture is about building communities.
Tatiana Bilbao: Absolutely. For me, that is the most important part of architecture. Architecture is not about building a building; architecture is about building a community.
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.
"We are at a moment of great cultural transition," Jorge Otero-Pailos argues. "The kinds of objects that we look to to provide some sort of continuity in that transformation is often times architecture, [...] one of the most stable objects in culture." This short film, in which an number of participants of the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial reflect on their work and those of others, tackles the theme conceived by artistic directors Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee: Make New History.
https://www.archdaily.com/880402/how-architects-in-chicago-architecture-biennial-2017-are-making-new-historyAD Editorial Team
In a large-scale, central installation at the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial, the likes of 6a architects, Barozzi Veiga, Kéré Architecture, MOS, OFFICE KGDVS, and Sergison Bates—among others—have designed and constructed sixteen five meter-tall contemporary iterations of the renowned 1922 Chicago Tribune Tower design contest.
https://www.archdaily.com/879715/in-vertical-city-16-contemporary-architects-reinterpret-the-tribune-tower-at-2017-chicago-architecture-biennialAD Editorial Team
What becomes of public space once violence is normalized in a city? Though it is naive to believe that architecture by itself can present absolute solutions to complex social and political issues, it is also important to explore and understand its possibilities as an agent of social change, however small.
As the boundary that separates work and leisure in the 21st Century continues to be blurred by technology, architects Christoph Hesse and Neeraj Bhatia sought out to uncover a tranquil solution. The pair are co-curating an upcoming exhibition at the Kulturbahnhof Kassel in Germany as part of Experimenta Urbana in a show called “Ways of Life,” which opens July 5th.
This international initiative seeks to discover “a new nomaticism.” A gathering of 19 emerging architecture offices each presents a dwelling encompassed in nature. These buildings are often equal parts project and manifesto. The show’s overarching theme is the delicate balance of naturally induced relaxation and programmatically encouraged productivity. Each firm must additionally consider constraints that include limited square footage, integration of rapidly advancing information technology, and a strictly sustainable design.
James Welling, 8183, 2016 from the series Chicago, 2016-2017, Courtesy the Artist and David Zwirner, New York and London. Image Courtesy of Chicago Architecture Biennial
The Chicago Architecture Biennial has announced the list of participants invited to contribute to the event’s second edition, which will be held from September 16 to January 7, 2018 in Chicago. More than 100 architecture firms and artists have been selected by 2017 artistic directors Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee, founders of Los Angeles–based Johnston Marklee, to design exhibitions that will be displayed at the Chicago Cultural Center and throughout the city.
“Our goal for the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial is to continue to build on the themes and ideas presented in the first edition,” explained Johnston and Lee. “We hope to examine, through the work of the chosen participants, the continuous engagement with questions of history and architecture as an evolutionary practice.”
Eleven women are being considered for the Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture prize for their "use of innovative architecture to effect positive social change." Read on to see them all.