2021 Keynote Lecture Featuring Tatiana Bilbao

The 2021 Keynote Lecture Featured Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao.  The event was jointly hosted by the AIA UK and the RIBA, and it was held at the RIBA headquarters on September 27th.  The event was the AIA UK’s first hybrid event, in that it was held-in person and simultaneously broadcast online.  The evening was opened by welcoming addresses by RIBA President Simon Allford and AIA National President Peter Exley.

Tatiana Bilbao presented a range of her projects – from a botanical garden, an urban aquarium, a large university building, a Cistercian monastery, a community-based project designed around a San Francisco substation, and a house in Germany.   The work is personal, bespoke, and carefully crafted to the client’s situation.

Interestingly, Tatiana Bilbao avoids the use of computer renderings, particularly in the early stages of a project.  Instead, she has developed a unique ‘collage’ style of drawing that attempts to indirectly convey the essence of the project through an assemblage of disparate images.  The collages are artworks in themselves.

Tatiana Bilbao teaches at Yale University, and has taught at Harvard GSD, Columbia, and Rice in the US, as well as other universities internationally.  She has been recognized with the Kunstpreis Berlin in 2012, was named in 2010 as an Emerging Voice by the Architecture League of New York.

AIA UK President Katharine Storr, AIA moderated the event and hosted the Q&A.  Drinks and canapes were served after the lecture.

The event was sponsored by Iris Ceramica.

Written by Lester Korzilius; FAIA, RIBA