Time and Space and Frida Escobedo

May 06, 2018

There's an undeniably magical quality to the streets of Mexico City. This is a place that has put forth countless creative change-makers, and the city is full of concrete evidence— and continuing to produce more. The distinct style that spills out onto the city's streets, first popularized by beloved architect Louis Barragán, has built a continuously budding community of contemporary creatives working within the city, who are breathing new life into what the late architect had left behind. The array of colorful, conceptual shapes and abstracted lines have provided a powerful foundation for a promising past, present, and future for Mexico City architects— and for proof, please meet Frida Escobedo.

Escobedo has achieved an impressive amount of acclaim— from winning honored awards, working on large-scale buildings and bringing her bold installation work to impressive international institutions, Escobedo's re-invention of residual structures has brought the spirit of Mexico City's skyline beyond where its been ever before. And this summer, she will be making another historic moment, having been selected as the youngest architect to design London’s Serpentine Pavillion, a project founded by Zaha Hadid.

Text by Anh Tuan Pham
Photos by Jesper D. Lund

We were lucky enough to meet up with the 39-year-old architect just a few weeks ago, at her dreamy flat in Mexico City. We spoke with Escobedo about everything from her architectural beginnings, her steps towards new spaces, and the overwhelming importance of time.

Give us a little background about your practice and how you got started?

I studied architecture at Universidad Iberoamericana from 1998 to 2003. I started collaborating with a friend of mine, Alejandro Alarcón, right after school. We started doing small renovations, so I never worked for another office. And then I did a project with José Rojas, the Hotel Boca Chica, and after that I decided to start my own thing.

What compelled you to go solo rather than continuing your previous partnerships?

Well, I really enjoyed collaborating with Alejandro, but we were boyfriend/girlfriend at the time, so that was complicated. And with José Rojas, he moved more into the art scene. He’s running now [House of] Gaga gallery. So he moved more into the art world, and I decided to start my own thing. But I do like collaborating with people a lot.

How many projects are you working on?

13.

Wow.

Well, it’s not like we have 13 high-rises. This includes research and furniture projects. We treat them the same way as building projects.

You are based in Mexico City and work on international projects — what role has the city played in your work?

Well, the first thing is that my team is here. But also I like living in Mexico City. It has a lot of information. It is very lively, it's very complex. It has a lot of problems, but you learn from these problems. It’s really nice to see how people appropriate public space, too. I haven't seen this kind of relationship to the outside world anywhere else… probably in China or places like that. But here, you can see everything happening on the streets. Also how we layer things up, how you see adaptations of buildings everywhere. That's something that really informs my practice as well.

Do you see a time when you may need to leave?

No, I don’t think so. I’ll probably travel more, but I like it here.

I read you entered architecture somewhat accidentally—you had interest in art and design and you needed to choose an area of study. Do you feel comfortable identifying yourself fully as an architect now, or do you feel you are existing between different disciplines?

The way I thought about architecture really changed when I went to the [Harvard] GSD. I was not fully happy with what I was doing as an architect. It was just designing and then building—it was very traditional. And then I went to this program and it was like, whoa, you can really do so many different things. You can do an installation, you can do temporary architecture that is more related to other forms of art, you can do research. I'm very comfortable now with calling myself an architect, but I expanded my idea of what architecture is.

What is your least favorite part of architecture?

The administration. The managing of the construction site, the money. I don’t like that part.

What were some buildings early on that made you aware of architecture?

That’s a very good question. I really liked Juan O’Gorman's [Diego] Rivera and Frida Kahlo house. I really liked that idea, having two houses, connected by a bridge, but sharing the same space. Anahuacall (Diego Rivera’s museum of pre-Hispanic art) is also very interesting.

Yes, we were just there. I was amazed by all of the details—on the floors, the ceilings, and all of the artworks.

It’s a crazy building! So those two in Mexico City. Also, when I was very young I went to New York with my mom and we went all the way up the Twin Towers, and that really impressed me. It was like, wow, this is so tall.

What are some things that have inspired you recently outside of architecture?

Traveling is always inspiring. You see things, you see how people behave in space. But also just conversation with interesting friends. We're working with Luciano Concheiro, a writer here in Mexico City, and that has opened the window of possibility to the office. We're doing this research with him about domestic spaces, and how we make invisible some parts of the population—even in the domestic space, with service areas and service rooms. And how this is really embedded in Mexican culture, which is very problematic.

Do you mean the class system that that suggests?

Yes, with Luciano we are looking at that very closely. And it's not just in the domestic space, but it expands into the city, with areas that we just don't want to see, so we bury them under a coat of paint, or push them outside, not allowing public transportation to be visible. Small operations that are trying to do hide this other part of the population which is right here.

If you had an opportunity to redesign your office, what might we see? What is your ideal office?

I like to have a small team. I really enjoy that we have more of a conversation and everyone participates, from interns to senior architects. Everyone is very young, also.

Is that important to you?

Mmm, I don't know. Maybe when when we start doing bigger projects we will need people with more experience. But the part that I struggle most with is the financial part. Numbers and healthy finances are a big struggle, so if there’s someone would take care of that, that would be fantastic.

Let's talk about your Serpentine Pavilion project. Could you tell us about how the concept began and how it evolved?

We had two things we wanted to consider. One was this idea of designing a temporary space that later becomes permanent somewhere else. In the brief they mentioned that the pavilion is in Hyde Park for 4 months, but then it moves to a permanent location after. So it was this idea of what does temporality mean? And then the second question is that the pavilion had to somehow represent what the ethos of the office is. So, ok, we work with raw materials, we like things that age well, we like things that are not super-sophisticated in terms of construction but that can be very sophisticated in how you perceive them spatially. And then we wanted to do something that was questioning this relationship between inside and outside. We decided to do this idea of the courtyard—which is very Mexican— because you're outside but you're in a contained space. Are you in the city, or are you outside? Are you inside the pavilion or outside of the space? In thinking about temporality, it was the perfect excuse to talk about time.

This is a common theme in your work.

A few months before I was teaching at the AA, and part of the program was London time. We were looking at the Greenwich Meridian, this line that is very abstract, that is invisible, but actually determines the way we live everyday. Our economy, how we move, how we travel, everything is determined by this invisible notion. So we did this rotation with the courtyard to be aligned to the Greenwich Meridian. It's a very subtle gesture that points out that we are aligned to that kind of geography that determines time. But then you have another type of perceiving space, which is the personal one. It’s this idea of how you feel in the space and, therefore, perceive time. We have two reflective surfaces, the pool and the ceiling. So it's you in the space, your reflection in the space, and your time in that park, in that pavilion.

Yes, I’ve read the pavilion serves as a type of clock.

Yes, it works as a way to measure time... but also to stop measuring it.

Culture

The Club Is Coming to the Stage

We enter and make our way to what is approximately front left of the DJ booth, where we’re accustomed to dancing at clubs in New York. “So is this a techno club or a dance performance?” yells an uncertain participant in my boyfriend’s ear. He laughs, bouncing along to Ben UFO, and yells back, “It’s both!” The club has long been a hot topic in European contemporary dance but it is only now making its way into New York performance venues, largely through transatlantic tours. R.O.S.E. follows recent examples like Michele Rizzo’s HIGHER xtn. at MoMA PS1 (May 2024), (LA)HORDE’s Room with a View at NYU Skirball (October 2023), and Gisèle Vienne’s Crowd at BAM (October 2022).

Do these performances compromise the club’s spirit — a space idealized for its anonymity, dark lighting, and thundering music? The notion of the club as a utopian escape is admittedly just that — an ideal — because of how its intense conditions can create barriers to entry. Still, the club remains sacred for many, a place to forge connections and embrace an alternative state of being. Looking at how performances transfer this spirit to new settings reveals what aspects of the club are essential and those that aren’t.

Sharon Eyal, R.O.S.E. 2024. Photography by Stephanie Berger, courtesy of Park Avenue Armory.

Eyal’s dancers make their entrance. The lighting shifts from roving blue to yellow spotlights as Ben UFO’s tracks transition to more melodic beats. Clad in deconstructed lace Dior lingerie with dark red tears painted on their faces, the dancers move cautiously in a tightly maintained pack, slicing paths through the horde with hoof-like steps and jerky leg extensions. After around ten minutes of this controlled choreography, the dancers vanish as the lighting shifts back to blue and Ben UFO picks up his dubby beats. The club, as we knew it, resumes. This cycle of tightly executed movements and free-flowing club-goers repeats several times, each time emboldening the dancers to plunge further into the crowd.

Clubbing in a building once built for the U.S. Army National Guard on Manhattan’s Upper East Side turns out to be surprisingly successful — at least for the audience. What starts as an awkward, scattered group searching for their non existent seats gradually gels into an engaged, bouncing crowd that erupts in cheers each time the dancers enter and exit. Performance patrons who might never step foot in a club find themselves swept up in its potential for communion, moving in unison with fellow ticket holders. But it isn’t until the very end of R.O.S.E. that the dancers finally break free from Eyal’s choreography and join the fired-up audience in a brief moment of improvisatory movement with the music. By keeping her dancers at arm’s length, Eyal seems more interested in the club as a backdrop for her signature movement style than wholly as a space with meaningful stories to be told.

Michele Rizzo, HIGHER xtn. 2024. Photography by Cameron Kelly courtesy of MoMA PS1.

Back in May, I attended Wire Festival, a multiday electronic music event at Knockdown Center that had no shortage of organically united dancefloors. It attracted a crowd of seasoned ravers who were eager to celebrate the start of spring as they danced alongside DJs who played well into the daylight. I left Wire in an afternoon daze to see Michele Rizzo’s HIGHER xtn. at MoMA PS1. My sleepless euphoria only deepened as the performance unfolded, starting with a lone dancer who looked plucked out of the festival.

The dancer, dressed in sneakers, baggy jeans, and a tight tank top, shuffled slowly into the gallery, perfectly in sync with the looping bars of an understated electronic melody. Soon, other dancers, clad in the same staple rave uniform, joined him — each having traveled from Europe for the U.S. museum debut of HIGHER xtn., which premiered at the Stedelijk in Amsterdam in 2018 and quickly became a fixture at kunsthalles and festivals across the continent. As the score’s tempo climbed, the choreography locked into a 16-count sequence, which the dancers executed with precise synchrony. They remained intensely focused, never making eye contact with each other, as they sought release in the endless repetition of synthesized beats. Once the dancers reached their limit, they stopped the sequence and exited the gallery, one by one.

HIGHER xtn. used the focused daylight of the gallery to highlight the meditative release found in the repetitive movements that dominate dark dancefloors. The performance’s restraint brought more consistency and intentionality than Eyal’s all-encompassing club construction in R.O.S.E. Yet both performances offer enticing entry points into club culture for those who may not frequent raves. Rizzo’s ecstatic, hypnotic repetitions reveal how the club can mirror other meditative practices, while Eyal’s interpolation of performance and clubbing helped hesitant audience members blossom by the end. Still, both works overlook one of the most underappreciated aspects of clubbing — its potential for individual expression. HIGHER xtn.’s pristine uniformity especially risks promoting the outdated techno trope that there’s a “right” way to dance to electronic music.

Maybe this shortcoming is, in fact, a benefit. For habitual ravers jaded by one too many sunrise sets, it’s a reminder to return to the club with more intention. If you pause and peer through the darkness, you’ll see hundreds of people moving to the same beat, each with their own subtle variations. This collective choreography is a ready-made spectacle that doesn’t need validation in a theater or museum. And when the music shifts slightly, you can watch the ripple effect sweep through the crowd while feeling the new beat in your body. Maybe this small bit of magic is best left on the dance floor.

Culture

Real Slick, Jack: Psyche Organic Arrives in New York

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Culture

Porsche SCOPES Brings Art, Music, and Design to Toronto

The festival was a full immersion into Toronto’s dynamic creative energy. Day one set the tone with DJ collective Living Room, followed by an experimental performance by Claire Rousay that captivated the crowd. Jewelry designer Steff Eleoff unveiled her Porsche Taycan 4S art car installation—a bold fusion of automotive and wearable art inspired by her Sedona ring—while OVO Sound’s Naomi Sharon and DVSN wrapped up the night with powerful, genre-defying performances.

We witnessed SCOPES Toronto bridging underground and mainstream with day two’s lineup. DJ Korea Town Acid’s set paved the way for Angelphroot and Dameer’s debut of BASSMATI, a track blending South Asian influences with bass-driven sounds. Chippy Nonstop’s return to Toronto and Richie Hawtin’s extended set were milestones of the evening, proving that the city’s underground scene has a global resonance.

The final day featured standout performances from local pianist Harrison, Indigenous artist Tia Wood, and hip-hop visionary Sean Leon, who elevated his set with a live choir. Moonshine Collective’s film and musical performance explored themes of African utopia, showcasing art’s power to bridge culture and technology. Rising Toronto star SadBoi, who paused her tour to perform at SCOPES, further underscored the festival’s commitment to nurturing local talent.

Throughout the weekend, we experienced installations from artists like Mitsu Mitsu and culinary creations from Bar Mordecai, capturing the multifaceted creativity Porsche SCOPES brought to Toronto. This milestone 10th edition, open to all, allowed Toronto’s vibrant arts scene to thrive, underscoring SCOPES’ mission to celebrate local talent while connecting it to a global audience.

office had the chance to connect with rising star SadBoi ahead of the event. In our conversation, she shared insights into her creative journey and reflected on what performing and growing up in Toronto means to her and her work.

How are you, and where are you at right now? You told me you were traveling.

Um, I’m good, I’m feeling really good right now. I’m traveling back to Salt Lake City. I had a show yesterday in Seattle. I’m on tour right now with Coco and Claire.

How is touring life treating you? Do you like it?

I love being on the road. To be honest, I feel like I don’t know—like I’ve had good experiences and bad ones—but this time it’s really fun, especially with the people I’m surrounded by. It’s also the longest tour I’ve been on; I have about four more weeks to go. I’m trying not to think about how many days I have left.

Do you feel homesick?

Yes, because when I start thinking about how many days are left, I start to miss my dogs. I’ve just been trying to stay in the moment—I don’t even know what day of the week it is, to be honest with you.

Oh, sweet! What are your dogs’ names?

Jillian and Winston. I know, they’re crazy names.

You’ll be performing at SCOPES in Toronto, which is where you grew up. Do you feel like the crowd is different when you perform in Toronto compared to other cities?

Yes, I mean, Toronto just feels different because it’s home. Every time I come back to perform, something in my career has changed. The last time I performed in Toronto, people just wanted to have a good time, and I’m excited to perform back home again to see everyone’s reactions. I know it’s going to be different from the last time. It’s exciting to see your own growth. Toronto is a tough crowd, though. If we’re with you, we’re really with you.

So, they’re super picky? You have to gain their respect, or what is it?

I think Toronto people are in their own world, but when something really connects with them, they’ll lose themselves in the moment. But it takes something to bring them out of that. Toronto crowds are tough because even if they like you, they won’t show it outright until they’re really vibing with you.

It’s like a vibe check, right?

Exactly. They’ll enjoy your performance, but it’s hard to explain. When people visit Toronto, they often say, “Oh, you guys are so nice,” and I’m like, “I don’t think we’re that nice, we’re just polite.” Like, you can walk down the street, and no one will say anything, but it’s just our mannerisms.

You mentioned Toronto can have a moody energy, especially at night, and that the underground night scene there really inspires you. Can you talk more about what makes Toronto's nightlife so influential for you?

Absolutely, Toronto has this unique energy that comes alive at night. Similar to New York, there are the popular clubs everyone knows, but you need to find your niche—the people who know where the real parties are. I remember going to raves in high school yards, sneaking in because I wasn’t old enough. Events like Baby, Jerk!, and Yes Yes Y’all were pivotal, exposing me to DJs blending dancehall with EDM—something I hadn’t seen before. Toronto nightlife is moody and intense, but when everyone’s out, it’s like the whole city is alive.