The Mexican architect Frida Escobedo next to her work, in London (United Kingdom).NEIL HALL
Mexican architect Frida Escobedo has been chosen to design the new modern and contemporary art wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, a project valued at 500 million dollars, the museum announced this Sunday.
Escobedo's choice is surprising for several reasons: because of her relative youth, 42 years old, because her work has been more focused on temporary structures and because she does not have a firm that supports her.
In the bid for the work, the museum considered four renowned architecture firms, including Sir David Chipperfield, 68, one of the world's most famous museum architects, who had done work such as the remodeling of the Royal Academy in London or the updating of the Berlin Neues Museum, which a decade ago made history in the discipline.
Chipperfield tweeted that he was "sad" to end a seven-year relationship with the famed New York Met (as the museum is known), though he later deleted his impression on the social network.
The British architect congratulated Escobedo and wished "the best for the project".
The concession for the Met work has been dragging out over time due to delays in fundraising and hesitation in choosing the architecture studio to carry out the work.
"I love challenges," said the creator during a telephone interview with
The New York Times,
which was the first to break the news, from her home in Mexico City.
"One of the commissions that any architect dreams of is to design an institution of the relevance of the Met."
Escobedo was, at 38, the youngest architect to design the Serpentine Pavilion in London's Kensington Gardens in 2018 and the second woman, after Zaha Hadid, to participate in that British gallery program to annually create a space temporary.
Quoted by the New York newspaper, the director of the museum, Max Hollein, declared that it was "a very important commission".
"This collection will continue to grow more significantly than any other area."
Regarding Escobedo, Hollein said that he was “a strong voice” within the architectural discourse”, that he created “very contemporary buildings based on a modern canon”.
Frida Escobedo was born in Mexico City in 1979 and studied at the Universidad Iberoamericana.
She would later get a master's degree at Harvard University.
In 2004 she received the Young Creators Scholarship from the National Fund for Culture and the Arts and in 2003 she was co-director of the Perro Rojo studio.
The Met will be the Mexican company's largest cultural project to date, and its previous work has included several pavilions and other temporary structures, such as those for the Lisbon Architecture Triennale, the Chicago Architecture Biennale and the Victoria and Albert Museum in Chicago. London, always according to
The New York Times.
According to the architect's website, "Since the founding of her workshop in 2006, Frida Escobedo has developed an approach based on the idea that architecture and design represent a crucial medium for raising questions and discussing social, economic and cultural phenomena. politicians".
“Under this premise, art, both contemporary and historical, serves as a starting point for the development of each project.
Challenging the traditional boundaries of the architectural discipline, the workshop's creative output operates on a wide range of scales, addressing the context of each project and using architectural elements as tools for negotiation and consensus.
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