Architect Gabriela Carillo of TallerGabrielaCarrilo and Colectivo c733 brings deep introspection and the spirit, politics and culture of Mexico and Mexico City to her work.  “I am in love with my work.  I have a six year old boy; he and the city and country where I live are guidelines in my work.  I am a determined feminist, completely against traditional practices that prevail in our patriarchal system.  I believe my work can do something to combat that, not negatively, but in a constructive way.  

“I grew up in a country which is always in crisis, so I love to translate this to opportunities.  I deeply believe in public space and the capacity it has to create deep questions about our traditional social practice which I love and value a lot.  I believe in culture and tradition, but always place a question mark in-between.”

A naturally critical thinker, Gabriela uses her work to break paradigms and question the environment around her.  “I think my work is always an opportunity to question concepts like private property, limits, voids and silences in the middle of a city of 22 million people, atmosphere, environment, nature and creating architecture without building.  I want to ask questions instead of giving answers, and create a voice of humility and humanity.  I love to work with structure and the beautiful game of lightness and gravity, especially in a city where earthquakes are our headaches.  

“I am in love with the possibilities that materiality gives because I deeply believe that we have forgotten our basic senses, so I pursue all of them in my work.  I believe that deep and good architecture has to do with atmosphere.  To achieve it, you need to place in consideration all of the senses, every element and local materials.” 

Before launching her own practice in 2019, Gabriela spent 19 years working with fellow architect and designer Mauricio Rocha at Taller de Arquitectura.  “I worked for Mauricio’s office for 10 years before we become partners in in 2011.  We are still working on three big projects together but we formally ended our collaboration in 2019.  I now have my own office, TallerGabrielaCarrillo, and I have also created Colectivo c733, a collective of 4 offices to design public space.

“I care a lot about context and environment, but also about social issues.  I dedicate a lot of time to observing and moving along the territory, not only from the obvious point of view but also in a bigger scale and from other points of view.  These elements are amazing inputs to start imagining a project...  In the later stages of projects, I really love to visit the construction process.  The way the light, the wind and the space happen is always a great surprise and provides strong input for future projects.”

Gabriela’s fascination with building sites stems, perhaps, from her geologist father.  “He taught me a lot about stones and land.  I learned from him to observe the territory.  And from my mother I learned to observe other cultures because she was a steward for an airline, so she travelled so much to many different places.  My grandma helped develop my local interest, travelling on the metro and being amazed by the museums and history of my country.  She really showed me the city I grew up in.”

A passionate drawer from a young age, Gabriela believes that her path to architecture was always clear.  “I loved to visit my father´s office and watch the young engineers drawing.  Since I was a kid, I loved to draw section drawings of different types of buildings.  My very first job when I was at high school was stratigraphic soil drawing for my father.  Then I entered National Autonomous University of Mexico [UNAM], the biggest and best public school in Mexico, where I have now been teaching since 2003.”  The learning in Gabriela’s classroom goes both ways, she says, with plenty of space for open discussion and research with her students.  “It can sometimes be hard to find space for those aspects in a professional practice.  It is easy and comfortable to become obsolete.  Through teaching, I am able to keep learning and reloading and reinventing myself.”

UNAM also provided Gabriela with the opportunity to cement her solo practice in 2019.  “I was invited by the Faculty of Architecture to do a competition to develop a project which was meant to be designed in three months and built in another three months.  It was a significant project for me because, at that point, I didn’t yet have my own team and it enabled me to start new collaborations.  The project, Matamoros Market, highlighted markets as really powerful social structures that talk about the memory of a place.  Winning that competition gave us the opportunity to keep working in many public projects all around the country.” 

Gabriela is excited to keep reinventing herself and taking on new challenges in her work, while highlighting architecture's ability to support diversity, dismantle patriarchal systems and support the recognition of otherness.  “I think our work as architects is a powerful social articulation, but also a communication tool to break paradigmatic points of view.  I think that the twenty-first century contexts force us to question our practice as well, as environmental and health crises, and lead us to other answers of what doing architecture means.”  

She continues to think deeply about design and how architecture can play a role in the future of Mexico and Mexico City.  “Architecture is an echo of our society.  And if echoes happen in different directions, powerful things can happen.  The key is to never forget where we come from, but still always question everything we are.”

To learn more about Gabriela’s work, follow Colectivo @c733_ on Instagram and Twitter.

And.  @gabcarrillo Instagram @gappac twitter and www.gabrielacarrillo.mx