Frida Escobedo has been added to the list of esteemed Serpentine Pavilion allum. Following in the blueprints of Francis Kéré last year, and BIG in 2016, the Mexican architect will be the first solo woman to take on the challenge since the late Zaha Hadid in 2000.
Selected by Serpentine artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist and CEO Yana Peel, with help from advisors David Adjaye and Richard Rogers, Escobedo is also the youngest architect to be chosen for the project in its 18-year history. Born in 1979 in Mexico City, Escobedo established a studio in her home town 12 years ago. She has become known for her championing of Mexican design inspirations and practices, something she intends to convey in her Serpentine Pavilion commission, which features a courtyard enclosed by dark latticed walls, intended as a play on the celosia – a common trope in Mexican architecture that allows breeze to flow through buildings.
In what the architect describes as ‘a meeting of material and historical inspirations’, the courtyard design will also be site-specific to London. Along with positioning the interior wall of the courtyard along the Greenwich Meridian line (a summation of the British timezone, established in 1851), Escobedo will also use a palate of British materials (namely cement and wood), chosen for their atmospheric, dark qualities.
Widely acknowledged as one of the more challenging briefs in architecture thanks to its short six-month time frame, and the Pavilion’s multi-function as both performance area, object of art and public installation, Yana Peel believes Escobedo has hit the nail on the head. ‘It promises to be a place of both deep reflection and dynamic encounter’, she says, hoping it will bring ‘the urgency of art and architecture to the widest audiences.’
The commission follows a string of international successes for Escobedo. She impressed last year at the Chicago Architecture Bienniale, with her multi-levelled gathering place that overhauled a reading room of the old Chicago Convention Centre library, and for giving the former studio and home of Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros a new lease of life in 2012. Her eclectic oeuvre also includes interior architecture for Aesop, and a commission for the V&A Museum in London. This new, highly public commission – a meeting of timezones, functions and cultures – promises to share Escobedo’s work with a larger audience, offering her practice more of the widespread recognition it deserves.
A render of the inside courtyard enclosed by dark latticed walls.
Left, a drawing of the Serpentine Pavilion. © Frida Escobedo. Right, Frida Escobedo.
El Eco Pavilion by Frida Escobedo, 2010, Mexico City.
La Tallera by Frida Escobedo, 2012, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico.
El Eco Pavilion by Frida Escobedo, 2010, Mexico City.
INFORMATION
From 15 June to 7 October 2018. For more information, visit the Serpentine Pavilion website and Frida Escobedo’s website
-
The Subaru Forester is the definition of unpretentious automotive designIt’s not exactly king of the crossovers, but the Subaru Forester e-Boxer is reliable, practical and great for keeping a low profile
-
Sotheby’s is auctioning a rare Frank Lloyd Wright lamp – and it could fetch $5 millionThe architect's ‘Double-Pedestal’ lamp, which was designed for the Dana House in 1903, is hitting the auction block 13 May at Sotheby's.
-
Naoto Fukasawa sparks children’s imaginations with play sculpturesThe Japanese designer creates an intuitive series of bold play sculptures, designed to spark children’s desire to play without thinking
-
‘Humour is foundational’: artist Ella Kruglyanskaya on painting as a ‘highly questionable’ pursuitElla Kruglyanskaya’s exhibition, ‘Shadows’ at Thomas Dane Gallery, is the first in a series of three this year, with openings in Basel and New York to follow
-
The art of the textile label: how British mill-made cloth sold itself to Indian buyersAn exhibition of Indo-British textile labels at the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP) in Bengaluru is a journey through colonial desire and the design of mass persuasion
-
Artist Qualeasha Wood explores the digital glitch to weave stories of the Black female experienceIn ‘Malware’, her new London exhibition at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, the American artist’s tapestries, tuftings and videos delve into the world of internet malfunction
-
Ed Atkins confronts death at Tate BritainIn his new London exhibition, the artist prods at the limits of existence through digital and physical works, including a film starring Toby Jones
-
Tom Wesselmann’s 'Up Close' and the anatomy of desireIn a new exhibition currently on show at Almine Rech in London, Tom Wesselmann challenges the limits of figurative painting
-
A major Frida Kahlo exhibition is coming to the Tate Modern next yearTate’s 2026 programme includes 'Frida: The Making of an Icon', which will trace the professional and personal life of countercultural figurehead Frida Kahlo
-
A portrait of the artist: Sotheby’s puts Grayson Perry in the spotlightFor more than a decade, photographer Richard Ansett has made Grayson Perry his muse. Now Sotheby’s is staging a selling exhibition of their work
-
From counter-culture to Northern Soul, these photos chart an intimate history of working-class Britain‘After the End of History: British Working Class Photography 1989 – 2024’ is at Edinburgh gallery Stills
