Frida Escobedo

When she landed the commission to design London’s Serpentine Pavilion in 2018, Frida Escobedo established herself as a young architect with a compelling vision. By that time, she already had a number of accomplished projects under her belt, from the renovation of La Tallera, the former studio of the painter David Alfaro Siqueiros turned public art gallery, to Casa Negra, a house featuring wide-screen views of her native Mexico City, designed for a photographer and inspired by the concept of a camera obscura. Escobedo’s works—often made with raw materials like perforated concrete blocks—opt for flexibility and a restrained yet daring form to create simple visual gestures.

Though Escobedo says she was too intimidated to apply to art school, deciding on an architecture path instead, her creative process is close to that of a visual artist who lets her pieces speak for themselves. But she also has an eye on the cultural landscape in which her work exists—Mexico’s social divisions and class dynamics have often been a concern in her investigations of buildings and housing—as well as on the storied history of built environments in her home country. “Mexican architecture is informed by its context,” she has remarked. “I think it’s more like a spirit rather than a style.” Here, she speaks about transforming lives through design and space, and her own spirit of invention.

Casa Negra is a type of camera aiming at the city, but, at the same time, it’s spatially functional.

Alejandra González Romo: One of your first projects was the Casa Negra (2006) on the