Tatiana Bilbao (Mexico City, 52 years old) says that if she can ask the new president of Mexico for anything, it is to help her get the kitchen out of the houses. In order to get women out of the kitchens. The most awarded Mexican architect abroad has always maintained that a house is not just a house. She has been focused her entire career on making the construction of cities more conscious, kinder, more useful for those who live in them — one of her first thesis was to try to pedestrianize the center of the country’s capital. —. Granddaughter of Tomás Bilbao, architect and minister of the president of the Second Spanish Republic Juan Negrín, exiled in Mexico, Tatiana Bilbao grew up convinced that architecture and politics were part of the same thing: a way to transform. Now, from her bright studio on Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma, where plants and models grow on the walls and ceiling, she recognizes her deep disenchantment with governments.
Ask. There is a phrase that says a lot: “Architecture is a reflection of its time.” What weather is it now for Mexico?
Answer. It is a time in which society has lost the ability to understand ourselves as responsible citizens of our community. We have the feeling that the political class is a separate class and that we do not belong there.
Q. Has this disaffection been caused by the political class?
R. Clear. They have deliberately disinvolved us to continue maintaining this power. In a course on housing we were talking about how in Santa María de la Ribera, the mayor decided that the graphics on the stalls were ugly, so she decided that they all had to be painted in a specific way. However, the human right to cultural representation is described in the Constitution. Then a student asked me: why don’t people take this to a legal battle? However, no one does it, it’s easier to wait for that mayor to leave and repaint it. It’s that hopelessness, that absolute notion of defeat.
Q. Personally, how have you experienced this political situation, the long months of the campaign?
R. I grew up in a family of politicians and architects, which is the same thing. I believe that architecture is political. My grandfather served as a political architect and as a politician while being an architect. I grew up very involved. My first job was at the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing and, when they gave it to me, it was my dream job. I realized very early on that this was not where space was produced, or even where decisions about space were made. I think that’s where my disappointment comes from. I realized that those who could produce public space and propose housing solutions were people from the private sector, academics and researchers. I decided to go there so I could ingest. I decided to be a citizen through my architecture.
I also became disenchanted with politics because today it is 100% surrendered to capital. I was the one who told everyone, “you have to vote, it doesn’t matter who,” and I’ve had two elections and I say, “I’m not going to vote.” Then I vote, because it is a responsibility and if not I stop being a citizen, but it costs me a lot of work. Because I don’t think my vote can really influence anything, and that situation frustrates me.
Q. Despite that, are you going to vote on June 2?
R. Yes, I will vote, I can’t not do it, my grandfather is pulling me by the legs from the grave (laughs).
Q. With what proposals could you recover that charm?
R. With facts. And that’s what I don’t see. I have seen processes, of all political colors, surrendered to personal or party aspirations.
Q. Do you think that the works have become a key part of the ego of each Government?
R. Absolutely. But this is not new, architecture has always been used to endorse capital or power. It has happened in this six-year term, but we can say the same about everyone, architecture has been a vehicle to promote the political position of the party in power.
Q. We come from a Government in which large works have become the emblem of the Government: the Mayan Train, a refinery, a trans-isthmus corridor. As an architect, what works would you like to see in the next Administration?
R. It is really necessary to start involving the community. I would very much like to see communities taking ownership of their spaces again. I imagine for mine, for example, achieving collective care spaces, that those would be the most iconic places in the city, or spaces of collective cultural production. I would very much like to see the Government, instead of imposing projects, ask the communities what they need.
Q. Do you think it is possible?
R. Yeah!
Q. But evaluating the three profiles that exist for the presidency of Mexico.
R. Oh, real? No. Because the projects need to respond to those interests that are going to bring any of the three to the Government.
Q. Surely we are going to have the first female president.
R. Notice that my daughters arrived one day very happy when the two women came out as candidates: “At least we are going to have a female president.” I told her: “But a female president does not necessarily work for women.” Claudia Sheinbaum did not open a single door, on the contrary, she put up walls to the feminist movement. And neither does Xóchitl Gálvez, in any way, at any time. It also took me a long time to understand myself and be a female architect: I realized until very late that what I had understood was a patriarchal system of establishing physical relationships through architecture, which was 100% detrimental to women. From the outset: the house is an absolutely discriminating space of which if we do not become overwhelmed, if we do not break the architectural scheme of the house, we will not advance in equity.
Q. Can you explain that a little more.
R. The house is described in the legal code of Mexico so that it at least has a kitchen, a bathroom, a living room, a dining room and two bedrooms, one larger and one smaller. That house is described to support a heteropatriarchal family and there is no room for anyone else: a couple and some children. Statistics say that only 16% to 26% live this way: where is the other 74% represented? Where they live? In spaces totally unadapted to their way of being. Furthermore, in that house, who does the domestic work that is not recognized as work and that supports the economy? Women. In that house you can’t even collectivize that work, one person has to do it alone, because there is no space. The State has been eliminating daycares, community centers, nursing homes from its programs… Meanwhile, cooking, washing, ironing have been hidden within these minimal units. There is no way to collectivize the possibility of taking care of ourselves collectively and that is what the house does.
Q. What would a house with feminist architecture be like?
R. Collective. No kitchen, no laundry. Work spaces should be work spaces, why do they have to be inside the home? If you don’t want to change the scheme of the house, then create a ministry that pays women to do that at home, but it is difficult.
Q. What do you see as more difficult, changing houses or creating a ministry that pays women?
R. I think the houses. We are trying to make two living spaces like this [colectiva] and we are hitting a wall, because the legislation does not allow it, because the legislation says that a house has to have a kitchen.
Q. In Mexico City, what would you ask the new head of government?
R. The predictions say that Clara Brugada is going to win, and I would very much like to see how her proposal and what she achieved in Iztapalapa through the utopias, the centers that touch on issues of water, community, care, culture, are They will multiply in the city. Not replicate them, but multiply them. Integrate that idea and make the expression absolutely local. That’s what I would like to see.
Q. If you were commissioned to do a work anywhere in the country, what would you like it to be?
R. I would deeply like to interfere in public policy, especially in the definition of housing projects. Because we are doing many incredible projects that transform a micro-reality, and I do believe that from these micro-interventions a complete reality can be transformed. Yes, I would love, for example, to help a group build a collective neighborhood. But, if you ask me, as if it were a letter to Santa Claus, what I would like: to change the Constitution and the Housing Law.
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