City of Rooms – Conversations on Domesticity and the City
How do the rooms we inhabit shape the cities we share?
In Spring 2025, the Heinz Architectural Center and Carnegie Mellon University’s Remaking Cities Institute hosted a three-part conversation series alongside the Carnegie Museum of Art exhibition Tatiana Bilbao Estudio: City of Rooms. Each salon unfolded in a different “room”—from living room to kitchen to bedroom—bringing together leading architects, students, and the public to explore how domestic and urban spaces connect to questions of care, community, and the commons.
From the Living Room to the Commons
In January, we gathered in the living room with Tatiana Bilbao and first-year CMU Architecture students. In conversation with Raymund Ryan and Stefan Gruber, Tatiana reflected on the relationship between private, public, and commons spaces, framing architectural design as a situated, relational, and deeply collaborative practice. The following day, she led a hands-on workshop, Collage as Collective Vision and Practice, co-organized with CMoA Public Programs and attended by CMU Architecture faculty and students.
From the Kitchen to Collective Care
In February, Anna Puigjaner joined us in the kitchen. Presenting the work of her Barcelona-based office MAIO, she revealed how architecture both shapes domestic life and reflects broader socio-economic structures, gender roles, and systems of care. Her lecture, followed by a Q&A moderated by Heather Bizon and Raymund Ryan, brought together students from the ASO, BArch, and MUD thesis programs to discuss design strategies for shared resources, domestic economies, and new forms of communal living.
From the Bedroom to Social Infrastructure
In March, we assembled with Michael Maltzan in the bedroom, joined by second-year BArch students and students from Sarosh Anklesaria. Maltzan’s work—spanning cultural institutions, housing, and infrastructure—is grounded in a deep concern for the social dimensions of architecture. His projects connect the private realm of the home with the public sphere, building bridges between individual experience and collective life.
The series is curated by Raymund Ryan, Architecture Curator at the Carnegie Museum of Art, and Stefan Gruber, Director of the Remaking Cities Institute, with support from Blaine Siegel and Tuliza Sindi of CMoA and CMU Architecture Public Programs.
