Voice of Dignity: Gabriela Carrillo on Constructing a Thinking Process, Leaving Questions, and Reinventing Oneself
By Julia Gamolina
Gabriela Carrillo is a Principal at TallerGabrielaCarrillo since 2017 and co-founder of colectivo c733, after being co-director for more than nine years at TallerRochaCarrillo. She studied and is an academic since 2003 at the Faculty of Architecture at UNAM, where she is principal at EstudioRX. Gabriela taught at other institutions as GSD Harvard and the WAVE program in Venice University, among others.
She is member of the System of Creators of Art at FONCA and of the Architecture Academy since 2019. Her work has achieved multiple national and international recognitions as the Emerging Voices Award in 2014, The Cátedra Federico Mariscal by FA UNAM, the Médaille d´Or Palmarés 2019 by the Architecture Academy of France and the prize ¨Architect of the Year 2017¨ by The Architectural Review. In her interview, Gabriela talks about being restless and getting to work early, and developing her own critical thought process, advising those just starting their careers to pause and observe carefully.
Tell me about your foundational years - where did you grow up and what did you like to do as a kid?
I was raised by an airplane flight attendant and geologist engineer. My father´s office was my favorite spot where I could see tons of 3D aerial pictures, in the time where Google Earth didn´t exist. I enjoyed spending time in the drawing area in our house, and dancing. I grew up in Mexico City, where my studio is based and where I live. Mexico City is also one of my favorite cities.
Casa Cometa by Taller |Mauricio Rocha + Gabriela Carrillo|. Photography by Rafael Gamo.
Casa Piedra Acapulco, by Taller Gabriela Carrillo. Photography by Rafael Gamo.
Habita Hotel Cuatro Cuatros, Ensenada, by Taller |Mauricio Rocha + Gabriela Carrillo| Photography by Onnis Luque.
What did you learn about yourself in studying architecture?
I was always anxious. I felt that I needed to do a lot, and to start to work very soon, which I did. I started working in my third semester. I always felt very grateful for having a space to study at UNAM that also gave me my first professional opportunities. There, I started to learn a little bit more about my country and the opportunities behind a crisis.
How did you get your start in the field?
At my university, I did a competition to work on a real project that the university was developing for the government - this is the one that happened during my third semester. I kept working for this special program in other projects for the rest of my career with different amazing architects, Felipe Leal, Alberto Kalach, Cesar Pérez; there I met Arturo Mera and Cristobal Pliego which invited me to work in 2001 with Mauricio Rocha. I worked for Mauricio´s office for ten years until I became his partner in 2011, and we became TallerRochaCarrillo. We were partners for nine years, and then I started my own studio in 2017.
“...spatial dignity is a human right, so I will keep working behind the idea that the tools to create powerful and silent space has to do with intelligence and not resources.”
Tell me how your work evolved, and you with it.
I spent nineteen years discussing ideas and developing projects with Mauricio Rocha. I´ve learned a lot and I believed I constructed a thinking process. Since I started my own studio, I started to collaborate with other studios, I co-founded a collective, and I started to focus a lot more in academic and research projects that gave me other foundations. I also had a kid. I think all these things had changed me a lot in the last six years.
Where are you in your career today? What is on your mind most at the moment?
I am fascinated by working with interdisciplinary teams in different scales of projects, and in both the public and private realms. I am concerned about our world, and how my work and thoughts can help at least a little bit to change things that matter to me. Social, gender, climate issues…otherness; of course memory, history, humanity, silence and equity; and finally architecture as an articulation, provocation and a voice of dignity.
Music House and Communitary Hall by Colectivo C733. Photography by Onnis Luque.
Criminal courts for oral trials in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, by Taller |Mauricio Rocha + Gabriela Carrillo| Photography by Rafael Gamo.
Matamoros Public Market by Colectivo C733. Photography by Rafael Gamo.
Looking back at it all, what have been the biggest challenges? How did you manage through a disappointment or a perceived setback?
Moving myself from the comfort zone where I was with my ex-partner. I am happy to have an amazing firm with amazing projects; I think life is filled with disappointments, as well as amazing opportunities. Failures have been enormous teachers for me; they helped me to pause, place my feet firmly on the ground, realize where I am and what I really want to achieve. They are huge engines to keep reinventing myself.
What are you most excited about right now?
I am excited about the projects I am developing right now, learning from really different voices that involve biologist, ecologist, archaeologists and all kind of ¨crazy¨ minds; about my investigation with cracks, resonance phenomena, geology and structures and the one I am starting with my students about migration.
Who are you admiring now and why?
I admire my couple and father of my son, Carlos Facio, amazing architect and a ¨renaissance figure¨; he always helps me not to be ¨too architect¨. I admire a lot of people out of the field of architecture, but still really connected with our work: artists, landscape designers, writers, chefs .. Of course my main figure in the world of architecture will always be Lina Bo Bardi, because of her freedom. At the same time, lots of young Mexican woman architects like Loreta Castro, Frida Escobedo, Rozana Montiel, Tatiana Bilbao, and many more… we are all on the same challenge of doing architecture in this country.
“Failures have been enormous teachers for me; they helped me to pause, place my feet firmly on the ground, realize where I am and what I really want to achieve. They are huge engines to keep reinventing myself.”
What is the impact you’d like to have on the world? What is your core mission? And, what does success in that look like to you?
I would love to leave enough significant questions in my students’ and kid´s thoughts. I also believe spatial dignity is a human right, so I will keep working behind the idea that the tools to create powerful and silent space has to do with intelligence and not resources. For me, success means balance, the equilibrium where all things that matter can have the same weight.
Finally, what advice do you have for those starting their career? Would your advice be any different for women?
To observe, to stay still, never take for granted anything and try to be free, but never forget the place where you belong; conquer your fears. For women, keep powerful, as always.