Tatiana Bilbao never met her grandfather, but he had a profound effect on her life nonetheless. As a politician in Spain’s Republican Government in the early part of the 20th century, he was forced to flee the country when Franco’s Nationalists won the Civil War, meaning Bilbao was born and grew up in Mexico City. But it wasn’t just his politics that influenced first Bilbao’s father and then Bilbao herself. Her grandfather was also an architect – a profession that she at first resisted entering.
“As my father said once, I think I have it in my blood. My whole family, they’re all architects, [but] when I was 18, I really wanted to go as far as possible from architecture, to do something as different as possible from my family.”
Eventually though, she gave in to the inevitable, although her one last act of rebellion was to study at the private institution, UIA (Universidad Iberoamericana). There are two top architecture schools in Mexico, says Bilbao. UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) the public
