She founded Tatiana Bilbao Estudio in 2004 and has completed projects in China, Europe, and Mexico. The philosophy of Tatiana Bilbao Estudio focuses upon how architecture should be designed with the user’s experience in mind, rather than for standalone aesthetic qualities. It is about “making places and spaces, by people, for people,” enhancing how a building is lived in and leaving a trace of those who built it. The practice maintains the ethos of labor-intensive, handmade buildings, providing much-needed jobs in Mexico by trying not to replace people with machines—and ultimately giving the result a raw energy.

The studio’s architectural work includes: the Culiacán Botanical Garden; the Pilgrimage Route in Jalisco, a social housing prototype displayed at the Chicago Biennial (2015) that cost under USD 8,000, an institutional building on the Universidad de Monterrey campus, three buildings of housing in Lyon la Confluence, Research Center of the Sea of Cortés, Mazatlán, and the Emma S Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center (ESB-MACC) in Austin Texas.

Tatiana Bilbao Estudio has worked across typologies and in different parts of the world, for which she has been recognized with several distinctions, among those: the Kunstpreis Berlin (2012), the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture Prize by the LOCUS Foundation (2014), the Marcus Prize Award (2019), Tau Sigma Delta Gold Medal of the ACSA (2020), Honorary Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, RAIC (2021), and the Richard Neutra Award (2022).

Tatiana Bilbao has held visiting scholar positions including the Luis Kahn Visiting Professorship, Yale School of Architecture (2015); Cullinan Visiting Professor, Rice School of Architecture (2016); Adjunct Associate Professor of Architecture, Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation (2016); and Norman R Foster Professorship of Architectural Design, Yale School of Architecture (2017). She has lectured at institutions including: the Royal Academy of London; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA); Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD); and Princeton-Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism & the Humanities.

Tatiana Bilbao holds a degree in Architecture and Urbanism from the Universidad Iberoamerica – IBERO (1996) and was recipient of the honorable mention for her thesis (1998). Prior to founding her architecture studio, she was an Advisor in the Ministry of Development and Housing of the Government of the Federal District of Mexico City (1998-99), cofounder of architectural think tank Laboratorio de la Ciudad de México, LCM (1999) and an urban research center, MXDF (2004).