Where do we find rest? How do we share our meals? Can the spaces we inhabit daily help us better nurture one another? How might the design of a living room or a kitchen relate to—and empower—a broader sense of community?
For Tatiana Bilbao (born 1972) and her Mexico City practice Tatiana Bilbao Estudio, architecture results from research that includes exploratory exhibitions. In this exhibition, five of the galleries are assigned an individual room typology—kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, living room, and garden. The architects associate each room type with current projects, revealing, for instance, the role of communal kitchens in a residential building in Mexico City or the way small gardens coexist with houses in St. Louis, MO. These relationships offer new possibilities for privacy and publicness.
City of Rooms communicates an approach to architecture filled with incident and capable of change across time. Tatiana Bilbao Estudio’s vision, research, and experimental practice welcome us into an interdependent, vital, and mutually supportive urban fabric, a proverbial city of rooms.
Tatiana Bilbao Estudio: City of Rooms is organized by Raymund Ryan, curator-at-large, Heinz Architectural Center.