Baumer Series, Tatiana Bilbao - YouTube

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• think of course I'm not here to uh to convince anybody to become a monk or 11:08 a nun um although I think their life is pretty cool um neither to promote any type of ritual 11:15 or anything or any type of religion I just really want to share really two 11:22 very important aspects of what I understood a monastery building is able 11:29 to do for the life of the monks and and therefore I think they should be 11:36 uh really um a rethought and exemplified to inform 11:42 much more our domestic environment 11:56 like that sorry okay thank you 12:02 we need to see him not this lecture so I'm gonna call him again because he's leaving so 12:11 um of course we have studied in these six past six years uh everything that has to 12:17 do with cistercian architecture has been Incredible Journey to understand all of 12:24 it and understand where it's come and how it has done and at the moment how it has built 12:30 um the the incredible things that they built in the course of two one to two 12:38 centuries 300 monasteries in the 11th century 11 and 12th century 12:45 and they all based in the same plan the plan it's 12:52 exactly what allows this ritual to exist obviously we don't understand what came 12:59 first if the space or the ritual how it's performed but it's a space that not 13:05 only allows this ritual to exist it comprehends and holds the necessities of 13:11 the physical body enable in order to enable those those rituals to happen it 13:18 is amazingly how the building really follows the day of the year and the and 13:23 the time of the year the season and allowing the activities to happen where 13:30 the following the light and the rhythm of the day that is an incredible thing 13:36 that the majority of our buildings are not following and I'm not gonna really 13:42 specify on how our design is moving forward as I said it has been an amazing 13:48 journey and we're almost in conceptual phase still but uh because I think it's 13:55 less important we're obviously responding to a very prescribed prescribed typology that we're not 14:01 pretending to reinvent or change we're just trying to understand it to follow 14:06 it and to think what is that building of the 21st century there have been little 14:13 adjustments um but in general the way the monks lives are almost the same since the 11th 14:21 century so we as I said don't pretend to um to Define anything different from 14:27 that when I think of the the most important aspects that I believe it could be 14:32 translated into our domestic environment and could really form and hold our 14:38 bodies much uh more intensively allowing them a much more sustained way of living 14:43 is the aspect that they them the building on their stance and the ritual 14:49 understands that all of us are both individual and social beings meaning 14:55 that we need the balance on the two of them to exist we need our individual 15:01 intimate space to nurture our bodies that can only happen within ourselves 15:07 physically sleeping resting our bodies regenerating Etc and on the 15:14 other hand we need the other because we're not autonomous human beings to take care of us we need the other to 15:21 bring us up we need the other to help us exist also when uh when we age we need 15:28 the other in order to to really survive so the monastery the monastery really 15:34 understand that no understands how to protect an individual intimate body and 15:40 soul and then how to really allow it to become social and the the the most important 15:48 protective layer for our own bodies is first of all the the clothes we wear and 15:57 second of all the first shell that we have on top of our heads so they understand that obviously the robe is a 16:04 very important identity piece but that is not actually 16:10 um their physical expression is because it's the first layer of protection and 16:15 they see it as a space that holds a body then they inhabit with that body with 16:23 that robe inhabits in this cell which is the second layer of protection for that body that cells is inserted in a 16:31 Cloister and when the cell um when you open the door of your cells 16:36 the first moment of interaction with another human being that a other human being is one of your 16:45 brothers which is an intimate Circle then that Cloister is 16:51 um linked to the more social programs let's say social in the monastery which 16:57 is the reflectory the Chapter Room the Sacristy um the library the learning room Etc and 17:05 the those are where the community of the monastery are allowed to to to be then 17:13 that those are connected to the church and the church is where the community 17:19 from the exterior comes in so this is when the monks are able to see the 17:24 community from the exterior the day progresses exactly in the same direction so the monks goes from their bare body 17:33 to the rope and from the cell to The Cloister and from The Cloister to the 17:39 most uh to the more communal spaces in the compound to the church and the other 17:45 way around through the whole day like that in stages by hours is not 17:51 something that happens directly it's not binaries not that at one point they are 17:56 in their cell and the next they open the door and they're in the church full of people of the community they go in 18:03 stages both in and out this allows them to prepare themselves both physically 18:08 and and mentally for the social interaction but also that creates a possibility of understanding different 18:14 types of communities that need to be created in order to hold the body to exist in the monasteries it's very hard 18:22 to find binaries although one might might think it's full of binaries because it's in or out you know but I 18:28 think if you really go in deep and understand it at least in the distortions I cannot generalize because 18:34 I don't know any more that better other orders it is a system 18:40 of that progresses itself which I think it's incredibly beautiful the other aspect that I really learned is um that 18:49 um or I really was able to put in words I have all I think I have always been 18:55 trying to understand this aspect um but I never had been able to see it 19:00 or put it in words that um for the monks there's nothing habitual Everything is ritualistic 19:08 Everything has a ritual and everything means something it's it's it represents 19:14 something and even even eating sleeping everything it's not a habit it's a ritual and I 19:22 think that this is something that for me has been allowed me to really think on 19:28 our domestic environment where we have really standardized um and a kind of defined habits that we 19:37 could say we all share in order to standardize and imagineize the way we 19:44 shall inhabit this planet and I think that this is key because all of us not 19:51 only we need rituals to exist we do all have different rituals in life the monks 19:59 have a very specific one and therefore their building is a very specific for their own use 20:06 um so what are those in our society it's hard to Define and that's the point we 20:13 try we eliminated them because we cannot Define them we need to allow everything 20:18 to exist but then we standardized uh those habits that we 20:23 were are supposed to have the same way all of us 20:29 we have been working as I said in these two topics in different ways in the 20:34 office since ever and I think that after learning from the monastery much more 20:40 presently we have carry on all those topics um we we 20:46 um started working for Olive West which was in parallel as the monks as a monastery 20:53 this is a project in San Luis Missouri we really thought that there would be a 20:59 necessity to understand how to create a possible idea of inhabiting a block 21:05 in in this Midwest City of the United States that typically has these blocks 21:12 that you can find in many cities in the U.S where the blocks is full of single 21:19 houses just facing the street surrounded with a piece of lawn and 21:24 it just uh Epper binary you know creating a very private space that is 21:30 inhabited only by the its owners or its users and then open it to the street 21:37 which is completely public and Collective we then got a block of 21:44 um of that of that fabric of city in the neighborhood in in the west area of San 21:52 Luis Missouri and in the West Central West End and um what we decided is to 21:58 understand how to create yes those private spaces but within their social spaces that could start to promote 22:05 different types of relationship between those inhabitants there and possibly 22:10 have platforms or other relationships to exist so we designed this block we shift 22:17 a position of the houses in order to allow much more interstitial spaces that 22:24 could potentially serve for other relationships as I said with other scales and different types of spaces 22:31 that could intermingle in the in the whole block so we we designed a master 22:37 plan with that well I hate the term master plan we can we design the layout 22:42 of that and as I said we intersected the homes that we also the houses that we 22:51 commissioned to three different other Architects with 22:57 semi Collective spaces same some saving semi uh individual spaces some 23:04 semi-collective some semi-social and some more much more social so for 23:10 example we have an area with a pool which is a much more Collective space within the community everybody 23:17 is it's accessible to everybody it whole it can hold the whole Community or we 23:23 have like this park that it's open even to the to the public to the to the street or we 23:31 have more spaces that are allowed to be used by the whole Community but they're smaller so immediately more and the use 23:39 would be more focused and less shared as the as the big pool we have also an 23:45 Edible Garden which is uh for the whole Community but it's taking care specifically by some part of the 23:52 community and so we orchestrated these interstitial spaces that really would uh 24:00 for us at least create the possibility for different types of um of relationships there's a grill at 24:07 some point there's a table elsewhere there's the shared areas for the the 24:14 parking and what we did with our house is just a very simple move of having 24:22 kind of the most secluded space intimate space on the top we turn it around and 24:28 from the one in the bottom in order to create more intimacy and the one in the 24:33 bottom to more open towards the exterior in order to allow much more direct 24:39 relationships with the others open spaces for the community 24:45 um it's a very simple move it's a very simple and kind of normative type of house 24:52 but we by not only inviting different Architects this is a house by productora 24:59 this is a house by Moss from New York product from Mexico City and then 25:04 there's another house from Asia and also giving kind of different possibilities 25:10 of different types of of houses and I they're very very different interiorly 25:15 we thought we could give a little bit more possibilities of a more diverse 25:20 Community to find a different way of living we really think in a way that our cities 25:29 are composed by each of those architectures that the city holds every 25:36 sidewalk every band every light bulb that is part of the uh of the city 25:42 itself so often we think that we Architects should think on the big 25:49 picture of the city what the city is how it's defined and how it's planned we're 25:55 already doing it by doing on every architecture that we insert it there so 26:01 we need to think no what is the city that we're making even if we're just intervening with a bent that already is 26:08 defining the architecture of the city I grew up with the Mantra 26:13 um a A in the next 70 years in the next 50 years 70 of the population is going 26:20 to live in urban environments I think the the time has come we are almost 26:25 there I don't know I don't know the numbers but um even though we we really 26:31 um uh repeated ourselves that Mantra we were not able to imagine a project for 26:37 the city and of course we were not able to imagine a project of like the modern 26:43 Architects imagined for cities um because the and our excuse was that the city is 26:52 now designed by organic forces by abstract forces and that we there's 26:58 nothing we Architects can do nevertheless first of all I don't think that those abstract or organic 27:08 forces can be called like that because they have nothing of organic or nothing of abstract they are really Market 27:14 forces that are driving uh how the cities are shaped and who can inhabit in 27:21 them and more and more the majority of the population is expelled so if we 27:27 think that each of the architectures that we do is creating the possibility 27:33 of City then we shall think who are we working for are we working for that 27:38 people to be able to live in the city or are we working for those forces that 27:43 have nothing of asterisk that I market and capital forces that are expelling the majority 27:48 I think that now the new mantra after the pandemic is what is the post-covered 27:54 city says KBS was saying um I think that uh for me it's 28:03 irrelevant to speak about that because I think the pandemic did nothing to our cities just expose our problems and 28:11 obviously took advantage of them and we were able then to see them more clearly I think we should be talking really what 28:19 is the post-carbon city what is the post-production city what is the city 28:25 that is not designed to be surrendered to Market and capital forces and the 28:31 city that it's really designed for holding our bodies to exist 28:37 we now live in a moment where um this statement that I'm gonna say is 28:43 really taken into extreme to exist we need to produce and if we don't produce 28:50 we can no longer exist for everything we need money we need money to eat we need 28:55 money to get brought up we need money to learn we 29:00 need money to have a shelter we need money to exist to cover our basic necessities but the But the irony and 29:08 the problem comes when we think that to produce we need to exist first 29:13 so I I would really think that we need to lay down a completely different city 29:18 a city that really allows us first to exist that has our necessities of 29:25 existing together in order for the for those uh to allowed to produce that's 29:32 what the monks do with their building they understand that if they don't hold their body understanding the Writ the 29:39 natural Rhythm that the body needs to exist of food of sleep of rest of washing 29:45 Etc they cannot perform their ritual life that they are commended to live so 29:51 can't we think on that same for me that city is really a city that is based on 29:58 the idea that we exist and paraphrasing Sylvia Verity we need a revolution at 30:03 point zero the one that really understands the the reproductive and Care labor of course the feminist 30:11 struggle comes along with it and understand the house and the housework 30:16 and the household as the most important structure that defines allows and really 30:24 permits our existence I um I I was invited 30:30 um three years ago to a lecture during the international women's day uh in in 30:36 Oaxaca a city in the southwest part of Mexico and when I was 30:43 a call to that conference only by women architects I was asked to present my 30:49 work nothing specific but I thought it was more important to present my work 30:54 with that perspective of um on a feminist perspective 31:00 how would my work Advance topics of discrimination how would my work really 31:06 was able to erase barriers or lines of discrimination to 31:13 towards women and when I was putting the lecture together I realized that my work not only had done anything to erase 31:20 discriminations or to really Advance the topics of women's in the cities but it 31:25 had done everything to perpetrate those discriminations that the system has and that is because I had not really 31:32 questioned our basic structure the living one in this sense I had really not understood that the society that 31:40 that we have today is based on the fact that reproductive and Care labor is not 31:47 recognized as labor is subsidizing the economy in order for people to be 31:52 productive this reproductive labor needs to happen and needs to happen without 31:57 being recognized otherwise it's not sustainable because Us in the system that we work would not allow that I read 32:05 in the way also there an interesting article in the New York Times that had a 32:11 figure saying that reproductive and Care labor in the United States 32:16 calculated in three hours per day done per per person person who does it which 32:23 I think it's even low calculated in um 32:28 salary minimum wage salary would soon 32:35 an amount which I can barely say is like 10 trillion dollars or something like that and that amount is the sum of 23 of 32:44 the most important the revenue of the two of yearly revenue of the adding 23 of the most important companies in the 32:50 US so this means that that labor is subsidizing this economy so uh if we 32:57 think that uh we think of the exactly the problem that our societies laid on for that uh 33:04 for that labor economy to exist there needs to be an invisible labor which is 33:10 bigger uh a force that is larger in order to sustain it 33:16 um and the houses the cities that relate they are that we have today are all laid 33:22 out to respond to that form of economy which is the productive one our whole 33:29 cities are designed in that sense even the house we live the house we live is a 33:34 response towards the work we do so it's exactly the the definition for the place 33:41 of rest from that place of work first of all our 33:47 houses are not places of rest not even there have never been it's where the most important job happens but second of 33:54 all not being recognized and being put you know kind of that opposite to the 33:59 place of work doesn't allow you allow us to advance any of the Discrimination issues to the people who perform this 34:07 work today this work today is done 95 percent by women but still I mean if 34:15 it's not recognized as paid labor whoever does it is going to be discriminated from the economy so I 34:21 would say that to advance the equality issues we need to talk about care and 34:27 also Architects have their responsibility to create spaces for that right now I think that we are only and I 34:33 I declared myself guilty at that lecture I still understand myself as that of 34:40 being the culprit of perpetrating the system that really is just allowing the 34:45 productive system to exist and to feed itself how then are we going to think 34:51 differently about the spaces we built first of all I started challenging 34:57 everything why do we immediately automatically design spaces for living with kitchens 35:07 we all think that we all need to eat yes sure we do all need to eat each of us but why someone has to cook for us in a 35:16 specific kitchen individually and why do we design decide that this is the kitchen that is the 35:23 most efficient one for what for what type of food for what type of person for what type of community for what type of 35:30 social Arrangement yeah we're standardizing the idea of living by 35:36 defining a household with an interopatriarchal family and that is how 35:41 our built environment is completely laid down and a task that serves for the 35:47 productive system because that is able to create more efficiently productive 35:53 human beings but that doesn't serve for anything else it doesn't really allow 35:59 for nothing else to happen and the worst part is that only the minority of the 36:04 population it really can exist in that type of dwelling in a good way let's say with a 36:12 comfortable privileged situation that allows them to have that environment as 36:19 a healthy one which is the minimum and I don't think even those are you know kind 36:25 of um happy let's say for me the the Mayan example produces 36:32 like really an immediate understanding for that is to reduce the idea into a 36:37 line which is obviously not possible but I think that is very illustrative in 36:43 Mexico a housing is a constitutional right the Constitution the Fourth Article of the 36:50 Constitution says that every family here's again the problem has the right to enjoy a dignify it has the right to 36:57 have an enjoyable and dignified place to live first of all they have they have 37:02 voted to change the uh the Constitution and in order not to say family it's 37:08 going to say person very soon I don't know if already that happened the boat happened it was approved 37:13 so every person has the right to have an enjoyable and dignified place to live 37:19 the the Constitution also recognizes that Mexico is confirmed by 67 different cultures that Collide in the in the 37:27 country but then the law the housing law this cries in the article number four of 37:33 the housing law and the first chapter says that a house is that one who in in 37:40 the house has at minimum one kitchen one bathroom two bedrooms and one living 37:46 space the Mayan Community is one of those 67 cultures that are supposedly to be 37:52 recognized in the Constitution and they don't live like that they have a really incredible form of living that has 37:59 existed since Millennia this civilization exists in 10 000 years ago 38:05 and that it's completely linked to the Earth it's a cyclical way of 38:11 understanding how to live it's a communal understanding of living they don't have divisions of spaces with 38:18 labels they have a central Hut where a lot of things happen depending of the day of the year and the year the time of 38:25 the year and they have individual areas for single members I'm not saying that's an 38:32 equal Society I'm not saying it's an example I'm just saying it's a specific one that has a specific culture and 38:39 um they have like shared spaces that where they do different shared 38:45 activities like cooking like washing like cleaning themselves they they don't 38:51 sleep in beds they sleep in hammocks in the houses that the law describes as a 38:56 house which is the only ones that I recognize by the system the only ones that are labeled as being able to be 39:02 called property the only ones that are subject to credit to finance and to 39:08 subsidize are those who are described by the law so their houses cannot they not 39:14 fulfill the definition so first of all culturally obviously they want to change 39:20 because they want to be not called that they have a house that they have a 39:26 household not only that they also want to belong to the system but also they are forced 39:33 to change even if they don't want to because if they need to exceed to us to a subsidy or to a credit to in the bank 39:40 they need to have a house that fills in that definition to do that they have to change their 39:47 culture that has happened for Millennia but not only that their culture responds to their weather to their specific 39:52 territory in that territory the weather is either hot it's 30 degrees Centigrade 39:58 year round I'm sorry I don't know that in Fahrenheit the world is in centigrade by the way 40:04 um they so it's 30 degrees it's very very very very very hot it's very humid 40:10 year round so the hammock and the response on how they use the spaces 40:15 interiorly and exteriorly responds to that condition as soon as you impose the 40:20 the the the the the way the law describes how to live they cannot really 40:26 uh sleep in hammocks because those rooms cannot hold a hammock so they have to 40:31 transfer into sleeping in beds because those rooms are thought as to be holding beds and when 40:40 they sleep in bed they are not being able to rest very well because they cannot swing in the night so now all of 40:47 a sudden they need air conditioning so all of a sudden they all need this kind of super infrastructure that is damaging 40:52 the whole environment so uh is this is to think why do we need to 40:58 define the house as this and why are we Architects have been the culprits to 41:04 really reproduce this way of living without even thinking just doing plants yeah house needs a kitchen a bathroom 41:10 rooms have you ever stopped and thought that yes we do all need to sleep but we 41:16 don't all sleep the same way and yes we do all need bathrooms but to bathe but 41:21 we don't all need bathrooms to do that and yes we do all need to eat but we don't all need to cook and we don't all 41:28 need kittens that are solely for that so we have been really thinking how to 41:34 progress that conversation in many Realms and I'm I'm going into an extent 41:39 and something and then going back now to an example we did way before 2015 we 41:45 were called to do a project in Spain that um that would be a house to respond for 41:54 a no own client and that would be built 41:59 in the forest and that was exactly the premise of the project that we would have exact freedom to design the house 42:06 that we wanted to design and I I was already thinking uh since then that I 42:13 really had no right to to to decide how anybody else should live so I I was 42:20 always thinking how to do that you know how to deal with this situation that I 42:25 for me was almost impossible to think that I could design someone for anybody else 42:31 and I started thinking on how to design with that other how to become that other 42:38 and that's why I spoke five years ago until I realized that all those Notions 42:43 were actually a very innocent thoughts it was already a base for thinking uh 42:50 how could someone else live in some some place that I would imagine and then I 42:57 understood that it's impossible to become that other and it's innocent to think that you could become that other 43:03 so I thought well how then to start thinking on creating an architecture 43:08 that that other can uh really 43:13 um inhabit it as is itself and not as myself so the first thing we started 43:20 experimenting in this house specifically because we didn't know also who was going to inhabit and at the end in the 43:27 beginning as I said for me that was really strange because I wanted to become that other to design 43:32 um and this was exactly the opportunity to do that okay let's think you know that other we would never know it in 43:39 this case we really don't know it but we will never know it and we will never become that other so we said okay what 43:45 something we cannot get rid of is the the aesthetical definition no so uh that 43:51 is even if you say it's just a white box that's an aesthetical definition so that 43:57 we cannot escape from it we're gonna Define it we're gonna hold to that but we're not gonna say for what is that 44:04 intended to be used we're not going to direct it so what we did is we created a 44:09 square that became a a full volume with that and we started modifying that 44:16 square in different shapes why because we liked it we started uh kind of 44:23 um uh put stacking them together in order to create different 44:29 possibilities of that shape to exist and then we spread it out in the landscape 44:35 in order to have different relationship with the Landscapes but we didn't decide 44:40 what was those structures used to they could be used in many different ways 44:47 and we started having problems when we needed to submit the plans to the municipality because they asked us for 44:54 plans and sections so we said okay now here we have a problem how do we do plans and sections that don't direct how 45:00 the space is done we can do plants and sections of only the the 45:05 the modules but they would not give us a permit with that so we started we started challenging the Notions on how 45:12 we draw um in this with this project because also how we draw is directing people how 45:19 we people inhabit the spaces we do a bathroom that's a bathroom we draw a 45:25 kitchen that's a kid we draw you know and people even sometimes go to the plants to see how they move their sofa 45:31 from their house you know so that is how we are deciding how to inhabit that place but not the person who inhabits it 45:38 itself we needed to create images so we asked one person in the office how would you 45:43 live in this place and this is the the response but we also asked different people in the office and it was really 45:49 incredible the the result and we like destroying this is why I'm showing the 45:55 ones from Gonzalo maulion who's one of them but really our idea was to understand how to create a space that 46:02 can be inhabited by one by ten by two people uh by one using everything as as 46:09 Open Door Spaces by one using a closed door spaces one using all of them rooms 46:15 etc etc at the end we also wanted to understand how to create tools to imagine also 46:22 different possibilities and that brings me to the next project which um it was um also kind of a call for 46:30 Architects the the one the other project is in Spain our house is not built the 46:37 the project before this one um our house I forgot to say this is in 46:42 Terrell Spain in the north of Catalonia in the border with Aragon and it's a 46:48 product called solo houses endeavored by um by a guy that commissioned 20 46:54 Architects 20 or so Architects two houses are built one by petrovon eldrichhausen and one by office from 47:00 Belgium ours is not yet built so I don't know how it works in this case there was also a couple of architecture 47:07 and Christian Hesse who called again 20 or so Architects to design a house in 47:14 Germany in a kind of an idyllic place for the new ways of life this was 2017 47:19 and they were calling the new ways of life working and living in the same space no because that was the time where 47:26 home office started to emerge This was pre-pandemic um and for me it was really weird 47:32 because I thought well first of all I don't see the house as a rest place so 47:37 it's living and working is the same thing it happens still already in the house I see the houses uh the place of 47:45 the where the most important work happens as I explained and second of all we have been working productively and 47:52 reproductively in the spaces we inhabit since the start of humanity so what is 47:57 about this Division I don't understand but what are we going to do we're going to do a house for ways of life for 48:03 different ways of life so we thought okay um they had a brief that described 48:09 exactly you needed to respond to a house with these amounts square meters with this x rooms no catch in a bathroom two 48:17 bedrooms one living room and one kind of working space so I would I said okay 48:23 we're gonna do a house that would promote different types of uses in the spaces because the spaces are going to 48:30 hold the different sizes different proportions different relationships to the landscape but we don't know what 48:35 it's going to be used for so we on the we kind of describe what are the 48:40 activities or emotions that we wanted those spaces to produce we draw them we 48:45 thought which spaces that we know in our heads promote those types of things we 48:52 describe them with words those six faces that we wanted to design in this house 48:57 then we collage these six spaces with the definition that we put them in words 49:03 it was very hard process because none of us would agree in that an image responded to a word and that was already 49:11 something really interesting of the process so we did the six collages and 49:17 um when we had the six collages we said now what how do we design a house from here and we put them all together we 49:24 traced them and this is a drawing that emerged and then we said okay now what how do we do a house from there uh we 49:31 started shaping a house and we had the the the um the deadline Bay close by so we had 49:38 to hurry up and uh so we have to wrap up we finished and we delivered this and I 49:44 would say that I was very disappointed because when I saw this result I thought well we could have arrived to to the 49:51 same conclusion uh just designing a house with the same precepts that we learned in school and as a house that 49:58 would have two but two bedrooms one bathroom one kitchen and one and one living space and one working space 50:06 to my surprise a year later um Christian has a cause and says you 50:11 know that then others two people very interested in building this house because they said that this is perfectly 50:17 designed for their way of living I was like oh yeah what is that um and then there I got I Endeavor myself 50:23 into a call with them and they describe the house uh with a certain types of 50:30 different uses in the among the spaces in a way that I would have never imagined so I thought well something we 50:37 must have done right because they really imagined themselves in this house being 50:42 designed by for them in a very different way that I would imagine this structure 50:48 for me we sure make sure that we never let us label the space so the plans and 50:54 images and nothing had nothing directive on which space should be used for what because we didn't knew that we just as I 51:02 said promoted spaces with different qualities physical qualities but not to 51:08 be used by certain activities and um well with and then there were a process with them to start the 51:15 construction of this house very soon we have also tried to understand how to 51:20 do that in the vertical well how to promote the possibilities of community making and one of the and this is a role 51:28 is a building a collective living for of 150 units in Monterrey in 51:35 a city in the north east of Mexico and um what we we really our premise was 51:44 how do we create the possibility of encounter in a 150 unit building and we 51:51 said well we have to create those spaces those spaces that normally we have a race from society because they create 51:57 conflicts they have to be managed they have to be there are places where you need to talk where you need to 52:04 understand what to do what you need to care for yes but those spaces create 52:09 Community we have tend to erase them you know by creating the most efficient ways 52:15 of arriving to your unit if you live in this Collective environment to skip any 52:20 neighbor that you could possibly encounter the ultimate solution is that elevator that brings you to your door of 52:27 your house you never even go to the hallway and we really erase that from this our 52:34 project and we decided how to orchestrate units with different spaces that 52:39 kind of share or unify them you know so clusters of six Space six units with a 52:47 room on purpose room clusters of eight with a Terrace and a and an open space 52:52 uh clusters of 20 with a more ambitious program like uh like a Terrace and a 53:00 room and a rooftop another they know 53:05 they're 40 that share a pool you know and things that really would allow more 53:11 possibilities of Encounter of yes conflict but at the end Community making 53:16 this building is on under construction I don't know how this is going to to to to 53:23 to to exist but let's hope it also informs that 53:30 we have been also trying to understand how to translate that into the public realm into really thinking that not only 53:39 spaces should be kind of those uh that Define our domestic environments and the 53:45 communities that can create but how does that extend to other domains in in life 53:53 in this case we did a university a building for a university called udem and them needed a building that 54:00 would hold a much more square meters this is the one the building we did then 54:08 they were built in the whole campus and the purpose of this building would be to remove the cars that were spread out in 54:15 the whole campus and put them all together so a parking a parking building for uh 1 500 cars but the challenge was 54:25 that this building this University little by little wants to get rid of The Cars first now a day now they already 54:31 get got rid of the cars from the campus but in the future they want to get rid all together from from their from their 54:39 surroundings they're working with the city this is a product that really needs 54:45 all that and um what we what we wanted to understand is 54:52 how to create a building for this transitional moment and that will hold 54:58 those 1500 cars but that in 20 50 years hopefully 20 but I would say it's more 55:04 like 50 would completely eliminate those cars from the building but the building would still exist so how can a building 55:11 that needs to be created for a very specific use could also hold a structure 55:17 that would allow other possibilities to happen so much more uh kind of physically we did that no exposing this 55:24 the very strict structure of a grid that defines the building and holds the possibility of the parking but that grid 55:32 that gives space and possibilities for other things to exist to bring a more 55:38 human scale to the building to be gave gave opportunity for the exterior to 55:45 become part of the interior and to really be able to transform in the near 55:51 future I I will just very quickly describe then 55:56 how a we have transgressed kind of from what it means to create spaces for 56:04 communities for cities into what are we thinking for the future 56:10 so um we have been working 17 years in the Botanical Garden in culiacan I'm not 56:17 going to explain the project it's very very thorough I think I did five years ago and what I uh what I thought 56:28 to show here today you know is that well first of all we have had this opportunity of working in this Garden 56:35 in continues for 17 years that has allowed us to create the possibility of 56:41 thinking um how the people have inhabited those spaces that we created in order to 56:48 continue thinking how to to to to to to really use them and our first premise 56:54 here was how to create little Pavilions that just enhance the experience of the 56:59 garden but doesn't really create a division between those 57:05 spaces for for different activities and the garden so we wanted to create 57:10 buildings that really become much more mediators between that nature that is 57:17 kind of very rough year round the weather here also is very very humid very very hot even hotter than in the in 57:24 Peninsula not the year round in this case it really cools down in the winter 57:29 it's the city in the north west of the country and how can we really create 57:36 this architecture that allows those bodies to perform a class or 57:42 listen to a performance or to anything that could happen also in the auditorium 57:47 but not ban them completely from the experience of the garden from experience 57:52 the natural experience from the natural environment that we belong to 57:58 from our own ecosystem so we started creating these architectures as I said 58:03 I'm not gonna um I'm not going to to describe them in 58:09 detail but that are the the mediators of that because of that Garden that we have 58:16 been working all these years we were called to think on how to consolidate 58:22 this Central Park in masatlan this Central Park has a masatlan is the 58:28 second largest city of the same state where the Botanical Garden is that's cool and this is 58:34 Atlanta differently from culiacan is directly on the coast and has been a 58:39 touristic City that more and more has progressed to a service city has become 58:45 very big and that really the the city grew so much that it almost invaded the 58:53 all the natural important features of the of the city but this one and it 58:58 didn't because this has a natural regulator in Laguna as I said that fluctuates in the level of the Lagoon 59:05 stressed through different times of the year and so really they couldn't they 59:12 couldn't understand how to inhabit this this place so uh what we what we did is 59:18 we understood that the necessity was to think how to mediate with the possibility of uh of using a space that 59:27 sometimes some parts are always flooded some parts are sometimes flooded and 59:33 sometimes right and sometimes our some parts are only dry so in this case 59:40 I really thought it was very interesting I mean in in some times of the year this 59:46 lawn that you see here is is completely covered with water and in this city 59:51 people is not used to to understand the circles or cycles of Seasons because the 59:58 seasons are not so um evident you know as in in a place like this in this city it looks like the 1:00:06 same season but the seasons look tight so the spaces normally people are accustomed to use them the same way year 1:00:13 round but in this case this pack really has a fluctuation so I also thought it was important necessary to enhance that 1:00:20 possibility we knew since we started designing this place with that strategy that took very pieces of infrastructure 1:00:28 would appear a museum and an aquarium and we were not designing those 1:00:34 um and what we wanted is that uh well we we just left them there we knew that 1:00:39 there was a specific design already commissioned for those two and we were 1:00:45 not thinking anything else when we started consolidating the the park and the Lagoon and we started even people 1:00:52 started using some parts of it we were called to redesign the aquarium and for 1:00:58 me it was the aquarium that was going to be in that corner for me that was a very 1:01:04 difficult thought because I have always thought of aquariums exactly as what 1:01:09 this painting describes man controller of the universe an aquarium is that program where really we we expose our 1:01:19 ideas on how we can dominate nature um to the point that those parts of 1:01:25 nature that we cannot access we can bring it to us and we can put it over there but I thought I mean first of all 1:01:32 it was ridiculous to think on an aquarium when you are really in front of the most important Aquarium of the world 1:01:38 a natural apparent of the world of course which is the Sea of Cortes and second of all how could you really think 1:01:45 of an aquarium there that would be holding penguins 1:01:51 in in the bottom of a of a dome it was already designed for that the Penguins were really beautifully put in a in a 1:01:58 dome underneath a dome a transparent Dome I don't know how they would control the temperature there but anyway 1:02:06 um I was not doing that no so I told them my concerns and this is exactly 1:02:13 that's our Point how can we do something that allow us to connect with our 1:02:18 natural environment outside much better and then the building that is now 1:02:23 designed so that was very good because then I said well okay let's find the 1:02:28 people who really are doing that how to connect with that nature and we call the 1:02:33 the people from the aquarium in Vancouver and which are people that are 1:02:39 doing they have an organization called ocean wise and they are like one of the most important World organizations 1:02:46 protecting disease they have an aquarium in Vancouver and they're doing that so we worked with them thinking how to 1:02:52 create this research center of the Sea of Cortez that actually is really kind of allowing 1:03:00 us to understand how to interact with this world and then how do we create a building for that so we couldn't imagine 1:03:06 that fortunately it was the year 2300 when we arrived and we discovered that 1:03:12 there was a building that was a completely um flooded at some point because in the 1:03:19 year 2100 uh it was flooded it was built in the year 2020 and the year 2100 it 1:03:27 was flooded in the year that we arrived 2 300 the water had receded and the 1:03:35 building had been taken by Nature it was completely invaded and we arrived there 1:03:40 only to create the possibility of the two large spaces that would bring you to the roof and that would allow you to 1:03:47 discover the vegetation that implanted there and that would bring you into the 1:03:54 central space to start discovering how really nature had taken over this 1:03:59 building and then how we could open little paths for you for us to enjoy how 1:04:06 many took over there this building is now is 2022 it's being built and 1:04:12 hopefully very soon being flooded in order for nature to invade it and 1:04:19 transform the existence of this building thank you very much [Applause] 1:04:32 Tatiana is willing to take a few questions and those who have questions 1:04:38 raise your hand because Neda will bring you the microphone since we're recording the event tonight 1:04:43 Nathan thank you so much Tatiana just real 1:04:50 quick on behalf of all the g3s thank you so much for the time that you've given us today we're really looking forward to 1:04:56 the rest of the week with you um you are attempting to break down the 1:05:02 existing social structure uh that exists in our society whether that be how capitalism has driven our city planning 1:05:10 or how reproductive labor things like being a parent are valued uh at zero 1:05:17 dollars by our economy you know even just reimagining what a house is is 1:05:25 uh a great example of this so that being said I was wondering 1:05:30 um do you consider your architecture to be a form of activism or perhaps a form 1:05:36 of dissidence within this existing social structure uh because like you 1:05:42 said we all have to eat we all have to make money um 1:05:48 and have you viewed yourself as an activist and how do we as young professionals 1:05:54 follow in those footsteps if so how do we basically become activists within 1:05:59 this structure as well well I don't think myself as an activist 1:06:04 but I'm sure um I I I really think that there's 1:06:10 nothing else I could do but being really critical and stand to my beliefs and if 1:06:17 that makes me being labeled an activist Let It Be I have no issues but uh but I 1:06:23 I really think that for me has become truly important to be very critical of every aspect of every precept that I've 1:06:31 learned through life and think of it maybe maybe I reaffirm 1:06:37 and reassure the things I was doing and I repeat them but there is also room 1:06:43 when you do that to understand that probably they were not so correct or to learn how to enhance them no rather than 1:06:49 thinking they were not correct how to make them even better I think there is a 1:06:57 necessity or the necessity of all of us to start challenging the presets and the 1:07:02 system because for me there's really as I said in the beginning no other way 1:07:07 than a systemic change and we it's very evidently you know we're seeing it the system is scrambling in all its aspects 1:07:14 environmentally politically economically socially so we really 1:07:20 urgently need to rethink how to propose a systematic change it is not possible for an architect to 1:07:28 think that I'm not that innocent I am but not bad to think that architecture 1:07:33 can do that systemic change but I think that architecture is the platform for our lives it's shaping our life so if 1:07:40 it's doing that it can shape and can become a platform for other things to happen if they happen or not that's not 1:07:47 the Architects or the architecture's responsibility but if there's not even space for that then how it's going to 1:07:54 change no so I think I do I'm the innocent person who thinks that 1:08:01 architecture has an enormous power in our lives not Architects we don't have 1:08:06 any but architecture has an enormous power in our lives and um I do think 1:08:12 also that architecture provides a primary form of care it's something we 1:08:18 need to exist whether it's a roof or whether it's a platform to 1:08:24 exalt and enhance Our Lives it is an architecture right so thinking of that 1:08:30 we have a very big responsibility on how Society is shaped so let's think what is 1:08:37 how we want to do that architecture no that's what I think every day and yes 1:08:42 I've been critical all the time and I cannot do otherwise I cannot surrender 1:08:47 to to two other ways you know if that doesn't happen well that doesn't happen we find it in 1:08:54 another place but I continue with that and yeah call me an activist is fine 1:09:03 thank you Tatiana it's really a pleasure to welcome you here I um the work is wonderful and I wanted 1:09:09 to speak a little bit about what I don't see uh because I think the power in your work and how you 1:09:15 enable your social agenda is what you don't do or what you remove so on the 1:09:21 level of representation there's no renders without the renders and when you 1:09:26 do your collages there's no walls when you don't have the walls you start to put holes into other surfaces right so 1:09:34 there's a lot of removing boundaries of program that you question boundaries between inside and outside all of this 1:09:41 these acts of absence I think is actually your most powerful design strategy so when you do build how do you 1:09:50 know I'm curious as to how you know when to remove and when to add because much 1:09:55 of Architecture is we teach adding things we rarely teach removing 1:10:01 yeah that's something I have been uh trying to learn so obviously what I would like is that the buildings that we 1:10:09 do perform as the images that we create you know and this is why we needed to 1:10:14 create a completely different way of representing um representing our ideas because the 1:10:19 tools we had didn't represent how we wanted our architecture to perform so 1:10:24 for me there are exact representations of the things we want the architecture to be uh probably they're not exact 1:10:32 direct physical representations on what the architecture is those are the plants 1:10:37 we produce because we do produce plants and sections and these things that they serve for building those buildings right 1:10:43 so um they they we know also where and how to use those images on the topic of the 1:10:51 of the removal or the adding um I think as architecture as a mediator 1:10:57 not between our uh with the mediator within our our ecosystem I hope I wish 1:11:04 and that it should be no right now it's a limit it's a world that it really 1:11:10 prevents us to participate of that environment in many ways sometimes even 1:11:15 literally no so I would um I I really think that when when we 1:11:22 start doing our architecture we start thinking how to do that not removing 1:11:27 maybe not limiting not putting not adding but mediating so what are those 1:11:35 elements that mediate and what are their definitions Is How We Do the architecture uh maybe at the end they 1:11:42 look like uh add additions and walls and the dividers 1:11:48 but if you really think thoroughly uh all those materials all those moves all 1:11:53 those lines I I thought and are placed there to become mediators between 1:11:58 everything and the surroundings I hope that answers your question 1:12:11 hi um so you described the solo house as a module field wherein other can inhabits 1:12:18 can inhabit specific to their needs however in our discussions earlier you 1:12:24 expressed some hesitation to at least the word module as an imposition on a 1:12:30 way of living so I was wondering if you could speak a little bit to that disconnect or maybe specify what you 1:12:35 mean as a module or a framework in that yeah that's a very good question I mean 1:12:41 in the case of uh when I was speaking about the module uh the modularity of the the specific design strategy of the 1:12:49 housing plus project um it's it's of that no of the modulation as a strategy in this case 1:12:57 it's a module as a as a as a frame as a structure no so I think that it's 1:13:04 different in the in the case of the modular the the module or the 1:13:10 design strategy that is done with modules it is restricting the 1:13:16 possibility of uh of really a specific because this is designed for people in 1:13:23 rural areas in Mexico no is determined a way of inhabiting that doesn't 1:13:28 correspond for example for the Maya community no they don't live with um 1:13:33 buildings that divide and that they're modular in any way no so that is not 1:13:39 allowing that to exist so I think it really needs to be very well thought as 1:13:44 where these things are being built no on the other hand you're not going to build 1:13:50 a Mayan house here because it doesn't correspond neither to the culture to the weather to the to nothing really you 1:13:57 know or with the Marine materials no it's I think you need to really 1:14:03 understand how those strategies and for where are I mean for me one of the 1:14:09 problems is they thought that if something is being able to be modularized in order to be carried out 1:14:18 in anywhere that is the problem because it's kind of 1:14:23 thinking that one size fits all but it in in reality when you go to those 1:14:29 stores one size it all they feed nobody no you they don't feed anybody so that's 1:14:35 my point you know how to understand when where what is the strategy for what and 1:14:40 in the house plus as I said being thought for rural areas in Mexico I don't think it works because they don't 1:14:47 respond to the way of any of these 67 cultures inhabit the planet you know 1:14:53 maybe you can use it for a specific project in a city block for specific 1:14:58 purposes that has the specific needs you know but I I would say that for me much 1:15:04 more is the idea of the modularity applied to to everywhere that I think is 1:15:10 wrong you mentioned a little bit about this 1:15:17 like in the solo house about how like you are trying to navigate like um 1:15:22 architecture not like imposing you know this Western um understanding of distribution of 1:15:28 spaces and actually like real life work which is like separate planes and sections and for it to actually go 1:15:34 through because it's entrenched them law like this Western understanding like how 1:15:40 spaces should be uh organized have you like collaborated within your 1:15:46 work or have you considered your work to be interdisciplinary like to cross like architecture 1:15:53 to collaborate with like urban planners or city planners to maybe even change the laws of understanding how space is 1:15:59 like uh aside from the colonial whale that we understand like the Western Wing 1:16:05 how we understand like kitchens and bedrooms and stuff like that I mean what I think is that we shouldn't I I cannot 1:16:11 imagine myself me changing because exactly that's a problem I think we 1:16:17 should all not be defining how we we should inhabit this planet no we should 1:16:23 all have the right ourselves to live our own way and therefore create our own 1:16:29 precepts that is a very big topic way of thinking and that is something that 1:16:36 probably won't happen ever you know because of the structures in which we 1:16:43 live in you know and obviously how Society is built and yeah also very soon we're not going to see the the real 1:16:49 system change that I I am even talking about you know but I think that 1:16:54 um it is really important to to give platforms for people to really take 1:17:00 stance right that is what we can do right now also us people of privilege 1:17:07 because all of of us that are here are very privileged to be in a in a in an 1:17:13 institution like this with an education like probably the majority of the people here and I don't dare to say everybody 1:17:20 has it's a very small part of percentage of the population so we that I have this 1:17:26 privileged positions should start thinking how to create platforms for anyone to be represented in this society 1:17:34 and move a step backwards to become those platforms to allow others to raise 1:17:40 up because Tatiana has another obligation 1:17:46 to perform a percent tonight for foundation in Mexico and I have to call 1:17:51 the questions here thank you very much for coming tonight and Tatiana thank you [Applause]