TATIANA BILBAO AND ROZANA MONTIEL ON WOMEN, INTUITION AND ARCHITECTURE

Ana Velasco: When did you meet and how did you meet? 

Tatiana Bilbao: We studied at the same university. 

Rozana Montiel: At Ibero (Universidad Iberoamericana).

TB: Rozana was a few years above but we had a lot of classes together. 

RM: We’ve known each other for more than twenty years –

TB: Maybe it’s better if you don’t share the math (laughs).

RM: I remember something, that a long time ago you were finishing working with Fernando Romero and I ran into you and asked you what was going to happen, what you were going to do. And you said “I am still going, I’m going to keep going, and we have to open up space for women. Let’s keep going. I’m opening my own office. You also need to keep going!”

AV: There are many things that tie you two together, from studying in school, to being women in this historically male dominated field, but also you both have expressed that architecture has an ethical and social value, which many of your projects reflect. What are your philosophies of architecture?

TB: Not long ago I heard a phrase from Isabel Martínez Abascal, who said that when she learned architecture, she learned it and mastered it through many hours of work, through a lot of effort, reading a lot, walking a lot, drawing a lot, and many hours of sleepless nights. But it wasn’t until she became pregnant, and she herself became architecture, that she learned how to be an architect. And that really resonated with me, because even if it was subconscious learning when I became architecture for my daughters I did understand so much more – the importance of architecture and how it relies on protecting a body, how it’s a primary form of care for the body. 

And I think, perhaps, women have that more instinctually. We understand clearly why that is a primary form of care, and through that there comes a different capacity to understanding space. I don’t know, but I intuit that, because a lot of women see this in a similar way. Even women who haven’t had children, we are all architecture, so we have that in our DNA.

RM: I think for me – besides all of this that I share with Tatiana – there is a part of social responsibility that comes from the context of having the luxury to do whatever we want because we do what we like. And I think that it’s a responsibility to work on social projects, ethical projects…and yes I think in this sense of being a woman there is a part where we listen more carefully to certain issues or we can observe certain issues that are happening in society, and how we approach these projects and these communities is important from the point of view of care. And this care is manifested not only at the beginning of the project but also in the process and after the construction is finished. So these are long processes that require a lot of energy and a lot of patience as well. 

AV: What a nice way of expressing that, because I do feel that since architecture is traditionally a very masculine space it is reflected historically in many of the buildings – towers, and skyscrapers, and the shapes of structures. But also in the element of care and architecture being something nurturing. In what ways did being women and following that femininity in a masculine space inform your trajectories as architects?

RM: Well I think we are a generation that has opened the way, and that way is opening for more and more women and it’s incredible that that’s happening. And I remember, for example, that the Scholarship for Artistic Creators had never been given to a woman in twenty years, which I think was also because there were few women who applied for those scholarships. They could maybe not imagine that they could win it or that space would not open up, and now the space is opening up on both sides – the interest in applying for opportunities and the resonance for the opportunities to be given to not only women, but to a younger generation. It’s been our generation’s responsibility to start leading the way.

TB: And well I would like to add that yes, maybe at the time we started working there weren’t so many women to look up to. Today in Mexico the panorama is very different, no? And I think that is something incredible. But the truth is that I started working without being aware that there was any gender difference, right? I mean I never thought that I was different because I was a woman, right? And I remember one day I went to give a lecture that had many guests including Derek [Dellekamp], a mutual friend of ours, and the first question that I was asked was “How does it feel to be a woman in this man’s world?” My answer was a bit angry that I was being asked this question again. When I got off stage Derek came up to me and he said, “Look Tatiana I understand perfectly your anger, I know where it comes from, I know you don’t want to highlight this difference, I know that even answering the question makes you feel different. But name a woman you saw giving a lecture like this when you were in school.” And I understood the difference, and the truth is it made me change my way of looking at it. I thought we had overcome this, but I realized there really hadn’t been anyone to look up to. And beyond being a different gender, it means having different sensibilities and different ways of occupying space, and by becoming conscious of that I actually became a female architect, instead of an architect who has a different gender.

RM: I think that also seeing and being able to go to conferences, maybe having some awards in, it starts to give confidence that we women can also do it and we can do it and from another perspective. So I think that one of the things is confidence and the other is to believe in what you do, to do it and to venture to do it without fear. I think there has also been a lot of resistance. I have many friends who left the pursuit because they saw there was no path forward. So I think it has been like a path of resistance and of following and believing and of strength as well. 

TB: There have been radical changes. I mean, when I started my career my role models were men because they were the ones I had close to see how I wanted to make an office. Today the students in the career and especially in Mexico I come back to the same thing because it is not the same all over the world, well, they can say, ah, well look, I can do it like Tatiana, like Rozana [Montiel], or like Frida [Escobedo], or like Gabriela [Carrillo], or like Gabriela [Etchegaray], or like Mariana [Rivera]… I mean you had to do architecture one way. And today there are many definitions of architecture and there are many ways and there are many cases that have been able to do significant work from other angles, with other tools, with other references. 

“At a dinner I was in with about fifteen architects, men and women, someone asked, “What building would be your dream to make?” And almost all the men said a skyscraper or like a project for the airport, and the women said a garden, a school, a public space… So it’s like a change of scale around what we women think about. I mean, I think we can make a city or make more architecture if we weave several small projects, gardens, a public space, a school, and not just skyscrapers. I’m much more excited about creating a community and working with the community than I am about doing a skyscraper where nobody else is involved other than a client or a developer. I’m interested in working with people.”

– Rozana Montiel

AV: There is also the element of being a Mexican architect, in a landscape that really respects Mexican architecture. As a double minority coming into new spaces, as you have said, it’s aggravating to only be invited in because of the minority boxes you check, but once you’re there you have the opportunity to prove yourself through your ideas and talent, and succeed against the assumptions as to why you’re there. It’s important that the spaces and who informs the spaces is changing…

RM: And also to add what you were saying, it’s not only because you are a woman, but I think that the work of all these female architects is very extraordinary. There is a lot of thought behind it, there is content, there is reflection, there are many things that have changed. Right? So it’s not just because you are a woman, but because you are contributing something of interest in the architecture that is being done. 

AV: Exactly. How do you see these feminine perspectives and experiences affect your own work, as well as in your colleague’s work and architecture in general?

RM: I love this comparison that women embroider, we weave, we weave ideas together. So somehow we embroider subtleties out of great details, great things. And yes, I think we pay attention to the complexity of the small, of that which perhaps is almost unseen but when you make it visible it acquires a lot of strength. 

At a dinner I was in with about fifteen architects, men and women, someone asked, “What building would be your dream to make?” And almost all the men said a skyscraper or like a project for the airport, and the women said a garden, a school, a public space…So it’s like a change of scale around what we women think about. I mean, I think we can make a city or make more architecture if we weave several small projects, gardens, a public space, a school, and not just skyscrapers. I’m much more excited about creating a community and working with the community than I am about doing a skyscraper where nobody else is involved other than a client or a developer. I’m interested in working with people. 

TB: Absolutely what you’re saying, weaving. And of believing that the sum is stronger than the individual. To understand ourselves as part of a collective that also encourages us to collaborate much more. Not only in the architecture that we do individually, which becomes a collaboration with everything that exists in the environment, but also among us. I really like to collaborate and the truth is that I have found that it is much easier to collaborate with women than with men. I’ve had very good collaborations with men, very very good collaborations, but in general it’s much easier to do projects with women. 

AV: What has been one of the achievements in your careers that you’re most proud of and what has been one of the biggest challenges? 

RM: Speaking about collaboration, the Ruta del Peregrino that Tatiana and I collaborated on was a very important project for me. They invited Tatiana, Tatiana invited Derek [Dellekamp], Derek invited me, and we started to collaborate on this project that was not just a project, a separate architectural intervention, but it was to weave a master plan and to understand the landscape, the territory and also to add architecture. And for me it was like a project that changed my perception of what I wanted to do later on. How I wanted to work with the people, to think about much more sustainable and ecological issues and architecture’s role as a solution.

TB: The cherry on the cake, Roz, which I haven’t told you about, is I went to give a lecture in Guadalajara and in the audience there was a girl who had just graduated from architecture school, and she told me that her family had been doing the Ruta del Peregrino for 20 years. We set up a call because I was so curious about her and her family’s experience living this out, and when we spoke she showed me pictures and videos and it brought tears to my eyes. That’s it, isn’t it? I mean, when there’s somebody that’s really moved by what you’ve done and it’s had an impact on their life, well that makes you the most proud of yourself. 

AV: What is a life lesson that you apply to your work? 

TB: I think being firm in your ideas and never giving up. That you don’t have to give in to anybody else’s thinking because there is always a door that opens and I think you learn that over the years.

RM: I think it is important to take a position, and to have ethical and practical principles to doing things. For me another important point is beauty as a basic right and as a right to dignify everyone’s life.

AV: Can you share a project that you’re currently working on that you’re excited about? 

TB: I’m doing a monastery in Germany and for me it’s an incredibly exciting project. I’ve been working with the monks on this project for eight years. They are the Cistercian monks who have a very special and very specific ritual that depends on chanting Gregorian chants throughout seven different sessions for five hours of the day. It’s very very impressive to work with them and to understand how there really is a typology that is a monastery, that is totally surrendered to sustaining a physical body in order to live this spiritual life. And the way in which the body and the space in this building are symbiotically related through the rites and ritual is incredibly impressive. This is a life project because it will never end, and because it’s completely changed my life and will continue to change it forever. It’s an incredibly special project. 

RM: For me right now the project is my life. Moving these two semesters to Paris, to make a life change. And of course there are new projects and new doors opening, but it’s this life project that is unique, that my husband and daughter…that we could find the space and the time to create this change. To create new opportunities for all of us, the expansion of cultures and opportunities for all of us, is an incredible project of life.

AV: What advice do you have for women entering the architectural field?

TB: For me the key thing is that you follow your own path. Be stubborn on that and don’t abscond to other people’s ideas, because that’s a way to create from our unique and different perspectives and ideas.

RM: I would advise them to act in order to move forward. Don’t wait for the projects or the commissions to come in. You have to go out and look for opportunities and put them in place, even if they are very small, they have a big impact. And I would also say that you have to look for knowledge more than recognition.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity