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? Inside Tatiana Bilbao Estudio: City of Rooms, the largest exhibition of the Mexico City-based architecture studio’s work in the United States to date, visitors are drawn into an immersive exhibition where drawings cover floors and walls, and building models, material samples, and tools fill tables, inviting us into Tatiana Bilbao Estudio’s creative process. Emphasizing the studio’s focus on the daily lives of individuals, the exhibition is organized into a series of “rooms” that reflect a typical home: 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.

Born in Mexico City, Tatiana Bilbao studied architecture at Universidad Iberoamericana, where she based her thesis on the rehabilitation of the city after the 1985 earthquake. She served as an advisor in Mexico City’s Ministry of Development and Housing before founding her firm in 2004 with the goal of “benefit[ting] every single human being on this planet.” Since then, she has had a distinguished career, first in Mexico and now globally. Her focus on sustainability and social values has gained numerous accolades, including, in 2022, the Richard Neutra Award and the AW Architect of the Year. Bilbao holds a recurring faculty position at Yale University School of Architecture and regularly teaches and speaks at prestigious institutions around the world. Her writing has been published in The New York Times, A+U, and Domus, and in her book, A House Is Not Just a House: Projects on Housing (Columbia University Press, 2018).

Founded in 2004 in Mexico City, Tatiana Bilbao Estudio promotes collaboration through its multidisciplinary staff of architects, academics, and model makers and by working with other architects, artists, economists, and local governments to enrich the impact of projects in Mexico, the United States, Europe, and beyond. The core of its practice is an analysis of the context surrounding projects, which scale from masterplans to affordable housing typologies. Recent work includes Estoa on the campus of the Universidad de Monterrey, which received the Cemex Award in 2021; Culiacán Botanical Garden; the Pilgrimage Route in Jalisco; a prototype displayed at the 2015 Chicago Biennial for social housing projects costing under $8,000; and a research center for the Sea of Cortez in Mazatlán. Its work has been featured in significant exhibitions at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, as well as in presentations in other forums.

Raymund Ryan, curator-at-large of architecture at Carnegie Museum of Art, is organizing the exhibition. Since joining the museum as curator of architecture in 2003, his exhibitions for its Heinz Architectural Center have included many focused on emerging architects’ engagement with the social ecosystem and their ability to instigate change through comparatively small projects. Examples include The Fabricated Landscape (2021) (catalogue, Carnegie Museum of Art/IN-FO.CO, 2022); Building Optimism: Public Space in South America (2016); White Cube Green Maze (2012) (catalogue, Carnegie Museum of Art/University of California Press, 2012); and Gritty Brits: New London Architecture (2007) (catalogue, Carnegie Museum of Art, 2007). Ryan twice served as commissioner for Ireland’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale and was a curatorial partner in Public by Design/Exhibit Columbus in 2023, featuring a project by Tatiana Bilbao. He trained as an architect with a bachelor’s degree from University College Dublin and a master’s from Yale University.

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