Shaping Space: A Visionary Approach to Modern Architecture

Winner of Le Prix Charlotte Perriand 2024, a global force in architecture – from London’s Serpentine to New York’s Met Museum and eco-retreats in Mexico’s Yucatán.

Born, raised, and educated in Mexico City, architect Frida Escobedo has built a global reputation with projects spanning London, Lisbon, California, Geneva, and her native Mexico. Her journey into architecture was almost accidental – initially choosing it as a pragmatic career path before falling for its possibilities within her first week at Universidad Iberoamericana. Seven years later, she pursued a master’s in public art at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, which would shape her approach to architecture as both a structural and cultural force.

Independent and fiercely creative, Escobedo established her own Mexico City studio in 2006. Her work champions simplicity – stripping forms and materials back to their raw essentials while unlocking complexity through light, texture, and function. This refined minimalism pulses through her early projects, such as the Boca Chica Hotel in Acapulco, a 1950s revival that captures retro glamour with a modern pulse. In Mexico City, her El Eco Pavilion challenges perceptions of concrete’s rigidity, balancing raw blockwork with smooth lemon-yellow walls – a study in material poetry.

Escobedo’s fascination with texture and interaction took her to California, where she clad Stanford University’s business school in rust-red steel – an invitation to touch, hear, and experience architecture beyond the visual. She created a dynamic timber stage for the Triennial in Lisbon, where each step heightened its incline – a quiet metaphor for space in motion.

Then came the breakthrough. 2018 Escobedo became the youngest architect to design London’s prestigious Serpentine Pavilion. Her approach – an interplay of perforated concrete tiles, light, and reflection – cemented her status among icons like Zaha Hadid, Peter Zumthor, and Frank Gehry. This was architecture distilled, powerful in its restraint.

Momentum surged. Back home, she joined 32 architects in shaping an experimental housing project in Hidalgo, just north of Mexico City. Meanwhile, the Yucatán Peninsula saw the rise of her eco-resort – stilted wooden cabins embraced by jungle, whispering sustainability with every beam and slat.

Now, Escobedo is set to take on one of her biggest commissions yet: leading the design for the Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, succeeding David Chipperfield Architects. Anticipation is high that she will redefine one of the world’s most revered cultural institutions.

With Le Prix Charlotte Perriand 2024 added to her accolades – an award honouring architectural pioneers in the spirit of the great French modernist – Escobedo’s trajectory is undeniable. She builds with intellect, materiality, and restraint, crafting spaces that resonate far beyond their walls.