Frida Escobedo

Escobedo studied architecture at the Universidad Iberoamericana and received a master's degree in Art, Design and the Public Domain at Harvard‘s Graduate School of Design. Since 2007 she has been teaching at the Universidad Iberoamericana. She has participated as a judge for the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Boston Architectural College and the Monterrey Institute of Technology in Mexico. Escobedo has taught classes at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London.

Escobedo is currently still based in Mexico City working in Colonia Juarez central area, where she works as an independent architect in an office with nine other colleagues. she enjoys collaborating on projects with other architects.{{Cite web |date=2019-03-25 |title="I didn't know I was going to be an architect" says Frida Escobedo |url=https://www.dezeen.com/2019/03/25/frida-escobedo-architect-video-interview-career/ |access-date=2022-03-24 |website=Dezeen |language=en}}

In 2003, with Alejandro Alarcón, she founded the "[Perro Rojo]" studio.{{r|:2}} One of the most recognized works is "[https://www.area-arch.it/en/casa-negra/ Casa Negra]", which was designed in complete freedom by a person who wished to live surrounded by nature. [https://www.dezeen.com/2019/03/27/frida-escobedo-casa-negra-interview-video/ Her first residential project was influenced by the function of a camera obscura, in the third instalment of a series of short movies about the Mexican architect.] The block structure is mounted on four tubes and lifted above the earth, and the rooms are located inside this structure. The design was finished with a large window to create total visibility of the City of Mexico, evoking the sensation of being behind a large camera.{{Cite web|url=https://undiaunaarquitecta.wordpress.com/2016/02/20/frida-escobedo-1979/|title=Frida Escobedo 1979|author=Arana López, Gladys{{!}} architect|date=20 February 2016}}

In 2006, "Perro Rojo" was dissolved and Escobedo began her own architecture and design firm.{{Cite web |title=Frida Escobedo |url=https://fridaescobedo.com/en |access-date=2023-03-21 |website=Frida Escobedo |language=es}} She has designed under her own name from the firms inception to the current day.{{Cite web |last=Pagliacolo |first=Elizabeth |date=2022-07-05 |title="Could Policy-Making be Considered Architecture?" A Q&A with Frida Escobedo |url=https://www.azuremagazine.com/article/frida-escobedo-interview-2022/ |access-date=2023-03-21 |website=Azure Magazine}}

In 2010, her installation at the Museo Experimental el Eco featured moveable cement slabs intended to accommodate lectures and speakers.

In 2013 she created a circular arena and in 2015 designed a series of mirrored complexes in the courtyard of the Victoria and Albert Museum.{{Cite news |last=Pogrebin |first=Robin |date=2022-03-13 |title=Met Museum Names a Mexico City Architect to Lead a New Major Project |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/13/arts/design/frida-escobedo-met-museum.html |access-date=2022-03-18 |issn=0362-4331}} When creating, Escobedo illustrates her works within a general theme of time, but not in a historical context but rather in a social context.{{Cite news|url=https://www.archdaily.com/905150/designer-of-serpentine-pavilion-frida-escobedo-named-among-2019-riba-international-fellows|title=Frida Escobedo, Designer of the Serpentine Pavilion, Among 2019 RIBA International Fellows|date=2018-11-07|work=ArchDaily|access-date=2018-11-13}}

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In 2018 Escobedo designed the Serpentine Pavilion for the London's Kensington Gardens. In her design she used materials and architectural styles from both Britain and Mexico in order to create a work that would capture the historical and cultural aspects of each country. The exhibit was open to the public from June 15 to October 7, 2018. The design of the Pavilion is an allusion to courtyards typically attached to houses in Mexico.{{Cite news|url=https://www.dezeen.com/2018/06/11/frida-escobedo-serpentine-pavilion-2018-360-degree-video-movie/|title=Look inside Frida Escobedo's Serpentine Pavilion in 360-degree video|date=2018-06-11|work=Dezeen|access-date=2018-11-13}} The structure featured latticed walls of British made cement which allow both light and wind to pass through; the open, yet enclosed structure Escobedo designed is intended to create an illusion of secrecy. She also makes use of a small pool and a mirrored ceiling which creates a contrast between light and shadow that changes throughout the day as the sun moves angles, the shadows that shift resembles the passage of the day.

In 2019, Escobedo designed a Mexican Pre-Columbian inspired bag for Salvatore Ferragamo S.p.A., using concrete block patterning inspired by her design of the Mar Tirreno 86 house in Mexico City.{{Cite web |date=2019-10-25 |title=Es así como estas tres artistas latinas te dicen cómo llevar una bolsa de mano |url=https://www.vogue.mx/moda/articulo/bolsas-de-salvatorre-farragamo-con-frida-escobedo-luna-paiva-y-milena-muzquiz |access-date=2022-03-24 |website=Vogue |language=es-MX}}

In 2019, Escabado sourced rammed earth from the Mixteca region of Oaxaca, Mexico for the bricks in her design of Aesop's Park Slope, Brooklyn location.{{Cite web |last=Magazine |first=Wallpaper* |date=2019-04-16 |title=Frida Escobedo designs Aesop store in Park Slope New York |url=https://www.wallpaper.com/lifestyle/aesop-frida-escobedo-new-york |access-date=2022-03-24 |website=Wallpaper*}} “It has a completely different texture and tone [than Brooklyn brick]. It's really special,{{Cite web |date=2019-04-16 |title=Frida Escobedo's New Aesop Store Blends Classic Brooklyn and Mexican Craft |url=https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/frida-escobedo-aesop-park-slope |access-date=2022-03-24 |website=Architectural Digest |language=en-US}}" says Escobedo. Her team arranged the bricks in stacks with opposing diagonal rows creating a grid that just out into the store.{{Cite web |last=Yellowtrace |first=Team |date=2019-05-12 |title=Aesop Store in Park Slope, New York by Frida Escobedo. |url=https://www.yellowtrace.com.au/aesop-store-park-slope-new-york-frida-escobedo/ |access-date=2022-03-24 |website=Yellowtrace |language=en-US}} Escabado studied Anni Albers' patterns and drawing to aid in the design of this grid. The storefront is a 19th-century building at the corner of Fifth Avenue and President Street and had formerly been a veterinarian clinic that specialized in cats. The Park Slope location is her seventh collaboration with Aesop.

In 2022, Escobedo was selected to renovate the Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.{{Cite web |date=March 14, 2022 |title=The Met Announces Architect for Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/press/news/2022/frida-escobedo}} Metropolitan Museum of Art director Max Hollein said "Frida Escobedo is an outstanding architect of our time. In her practice, she wields architecture as a way to create powerful spatial and communal experiences, and she has shown dexterity and sensitivity in her elegant use of material while bringing sincere attention to today’s socioeconomic and ecological issues. Already through her partnership, Frida has demonstrated her vision to create enthralling galleries that will challenge the embedded hierarchies of our history and chart a more accessible trajectory for the new wing."{{Cite web |title=Frida Escobedo Selected to Design $500 Million Met Expansion – |url=https://www.world-architects.com/en/architecture-news/headlines/frida-escobedo-selected-to-design-500-million-met-expansion |access-date=2022-03-24 |website=World-Architects |language=en}} Escobedo is the first woman to design a wing at The Met.{{Cite web |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/press/news/2022/frida-escobedo |access-date=2022-03-24 |website=www.metmuseum.org|title=The Met Announces Architect for Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing – the Metropolitan Museum of Art }}

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With each new project, Escobado delves into multiple references before producing the proposed artwork. In the early stages of the circular construction System_01 built for the exhibition Open House in Geneva, for example, she mentioned the archeological sites of Stonehenge in England and Nabta Playa in Upper Egypt with their megalithic monuments arranged in a circle, but also the tepees of the Great Plains Indians and the huts of lake-dwellers as we have long imagined them on the shores of Swiss lakes. Louise Bourgeois’s drawings of spiderwebs are just as much a part of the architect’s references as Archimedes’ treatise Measurement of a Circle. The three cylindrical wooden elements are differently proportioned in terms of their circumference and height, designed according to mathematical relationships, and largely open, like 360° viewpoints on the park. They form spaces that the public is invited to take over and use. Escobedo defends the idea that an architectural design is always brought to completion by the way it is inhabited.Open House catalogue, Scheidegger & Spiess ISBN 978-3-85881-885-0 Frida Escobedo pp 99–101

As a child Escobedo accompanied her father to the hospital where he worked as a doctor. The hospital is where she spent her time staring out the window at near by housing complexes. In an Interview with Architectural Digest, Escobedo says she was "trying to understand how space reflects people’s personalities,” by looking out the window. She reveals later in the interview that people's emotions and relationships are revealed by building's design.{{Cite journal|date=2016|title=Inside front cover|journal=CrystEngComm|volume=18|issue=44|pages=8520|doi=10.1039/c6ce90182d|issn=1466-8033}}

Escobedo didn't always know she was going to be an architect, "Some people have like a very clear idea of what they want to do in life very early on. I didn't. I was 17 when I had to decide what career I needed to choose". However Escobedo never doubted she was going to be in a creative field. after her first week of architecture school she knew architecture was her passion.

• 2004 – Casa Negra (in collaboration with Alejandro Alarcón) – Mexico City
• 2006 – Restoration at the Hotel Boca Chica (in collaboration with José Rojas) – Acapulco, Mexico
• 2008 – Project by Ordos 100
• 2008 – Hotel Boca Chica {{Cite web |title=Hotel Boca Chica – Frida Escobedo |url=https://fridaescobedo.com/en/project/villa-49-ordos-100-esp/ |access-date=2022-03-24 |website=Hotel Boca Chica – Frida Escobedo |language=es}}
• 2010 – Pavilion at the Museo Experimental el Eco – Mexico City
• 2010 – Hotel Boca Chica (in collaboration with José Rojas) – Acapulco, Guerrero, Mexico{{Cite web|title=Hotel Boca Chica – Frida Escobedo|url=https://fridaescobedo.com/project/villa-49-ordos-100-esp/|access-date=2021-04-06|website=Hotel Boca Chica – Frida Escobedo|language=es}}
• 2012 – Restoration de La Tallera, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico{{Cite web|title=La Tallera – Frida Escobedo|url=https://fridaescobedo.com/project/la-tallera/|access-date=2021-04-06|website=La Tallera – Frida Escobedo|language=es}}
• 2013 – Plaza Cívica – Lisbon
• 2014 – Libreria Octavio Paz – Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico
• 2015 – Installation at the Victoria & Albert Museum
• 2015 – Aesop Wynwood – Miami FL, EUA{{Cite web|title=Aesop Wynwood – Frida Escobedo|url=https://fridaescobedo.com/project/aesop-wynwood/|access-date=2021-04-06|website=Aesop Wynwood – Frida Escobedo|language=es}}
• 2016 – Aesop Coconut Grove – Miami FL, EUA{{Cite web|title=Aesop Coconut Grove – Frida Escobedo|url=https://fridaescobedo.com/project/aesop-coconut-grove/|access-date=2021-04-06|website=Aesop Coconut Grove – Frida Escobedo|language=es}}
• 2016 – GSB Stanford at Highland Halls, GSB Stanford University – Palo Alto CA, EUA{{Cite web|title=GSB Stanford – Frida Escobedo|url=https://fridaescobedo.com/project/very-short-space/|access-date=2021-04-06|website=GSB Stanford – Frida Escobedo|language=es}}
• 2017 – Aesop West Loop – Chicago IL, EUA{{Cite web|title=Aesop West Loop – Frida Escobedo|url=https://fridaescobedo.com/project/aesop-west-loop/|access-date=2021-04-06|website=Aesop West Loop – Frida Escobedo|language=es}}
• 2017 – Exhibition at Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery – Columbia University, New York{{Cite web |date=Oct 20, 2017 – Feb 3, 2018 |title=No 9 An Exhibition By Frida Escobedo |url=https://www.arch.columbia.edu/exhibitions/63-no-9-an-exhibition-by-frida-escobedo%7Ctitle=No |access-date=2022-03-18 |website=Columbia GSAPP |publisher=Columbia University |language=en}}
• 2017 – Del territorio al habitante at Laboratorio de Vivienda Infonavit – Apan, Hidalgo, Mexico{{Cite web|title=Del territorio al habitante – Frida Escobedo|url=https://fridaescobedo.com/project/from-territory-to-inhabitant/|access-date=2021-04-06|website=Del territorio al habitante – Frida Escobedo|language=es}}
• 2018 – Serpentine Pavilion 2018 {{Cite web |url=http://www.serpentinegalleries.org/files/press-releases/pavilion_2018_press_pack_final.pdf |title=Archived copy |access-date=14 June 2018 |archive-date=14 June 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180614094702/http://www.serpentinegalleries.org/files/press-releases/pavilion_2018_press_pack_final.pdf |url-status=dead }}
• 2018 – Casa Julia (Julia House), Ocuilan, State of Mexico, Mexico {{Cite web |title=Casa Julia – Frida Escobedo |url=https://fridaescobedo.com/en/project/casa-julia/ |access-date=2022-03-24 |website=Casa Julia – Frida Escobedo |language=es}}
• 2019 – Aesop Park Slope – Brooklyn NY, EUA{{Cite web|title=Aesop Park Slope – Frida Escobedo|url=https://fridaescobedo.com/project/aesop-park-slope/|access-date=2021-04-06|website=Aesop Park Slope – Frida Escobedo|language=es}}
• 2019 – Mar Tirreno – Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico{{Cite web|title=Mar Tirreno – Frida Escobedo|url=https://fridaescobedo.com/project/mar-tirreno/|access-date=2021-04-06|website=Mar Tirreno – Frida Escobedo|language=es}}
• 2020 – Niddo Cafe (in collaboration with Mauricio Mesta) – Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico{{Cite web|title=Niddo Café – Frida Escobedo|url=https://fridaescobedo.com/project/niddocafe/|access-date=2021-04-06|website=Niddo Café – Frida Escobedo|language=es}}
• 2022 – System_01 Pavilion – Open House exhibition, Geneva http://interversion.org/open-house/ System_01 by Frida Escbedo at Open House
• 2022 (announced, opening TBA) – Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing (renovation), The Met– New York, NY.

• 2004 – Young Creators' Scholarship from the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Mexico
• 2009 – Winner of the Young Architects Forum, part of Architectural Association of New York.
• 2010 – Marcelo Zambrano Scholarship
• 2013 – Nominated for Arc Vision Prize for Women
• 2012 – Her work was featured at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, at the Mission Cultural Center for the Latino Arts in San Francisco, and at Storefront for Art and Architecture.
• 2012 – Finalist for the programme Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative.
• 2014 – Ibero-American Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism Prize (IX BIAU)
• 2016 – Emerging Architecture Award, Architectural Review{{Cite web|url=http://www.obrasweb.mx/arquitectura/2016/09/28/la-mexicana-frida-escobedo-gana-el-premio-de-arquitectura-emergente-2016|title=La mexicana Frida Escobedo gana el premio de Arquitectura Emergente 2016 web|date=28 September 2016}}
• 2017 – Architectural League Emerging Voices{{cite news |url=https://www.architectmagazine.com/design/eight-firms-selected-as-2017-emerging-voices_o |first=Symone |last=Strong |title=Eight Firms Selected as 2017 Emerging Voices |date=2017-02-08 |accessdate=2021-02-24 |work=Architect Magazine}}

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{{Cite web|url=http://chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org/participants/frida-escobedo/|title=Frida Escobedo – Chicago Architecture Biennial|website=chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org|access-date=2018-11-13}}

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• {{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20151101033028/http://www.scrapermagazine.com/2015/09/frida-escobedo.html Interview with Scraper Magazine]}}
• Ferris, Natalie, “Frida Escobedo, Sending Ripples Across Space and Time,” Space Volume, no. 610 (Sept 2018): p 30-35.
• Foges, Chris, “Frida Escobedo’s Serpentine Pavilion Explores the Passage of Time,” Architectural Record Volume, no. 206 (July 2018): p 27.
• ”Mar Tirreno Residences, Mexico City: Frida Escobedo, Filtered Light,” Domus Volume, no. 1053 (Jan 2021): p 28-33.

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Category:Living people

Category:1979 births

Category:Mexican women architects

Category:Universidad Iberoamericana alumni

Category:Harvard Graduate School of Design alumni

Category:21st-century Mexican architects

Category:Academic staff of Universidad Iberoamericana