The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City recently revealed the design for its new contemporary art wing — a project in the hands of acclaimed Mexican architect Frida Escobedo.
Escobedo’s design of the Met’s modern and contemporary art wing marks the first time in the museum’s 154-year history that a woman has been chosen to lead the design of a major wing.
Her vision reimagines the wing’s modern and contemporary galleries, doubling exhibition space to 70,000 square feet within the existing footprint.
The design features a textured limestone façade inspired by traditional Mexican celosías — architectural screens, or lattices — that blend influences from multiple cultures.
Now to be named after lead donors Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing, the wing’s transformation will include expansive outdoor terraces on the fourth and fifth floors, offering sweeping views of Central Park and Manhattan’s skyline, in addition to connecting the galleries to the rest of the museum.
Escobedo, 45, was tapped to lead the now-US $550 million project in early 2022, following an extensive search by the largest art museum in the Americas and one of the world’s most prestigious. She beat out older and more experienced architects, major studios and winners of the esteemed Pritzker Architecture Prize.
Escobedo’s portfolio also includes the design of the Serpentine Pavilion in London in 2018 and the upcoming renovation of Paris’ Pompidou Center.
Last year, she was named the world’s 2024 Architect of the Year by Architectural Digest España (AD).
“If the Met in New York and the Pompidou Centre in Paris have placed their trust in her talent, there must be a reason,” the publication wrote.
Escobedo’s design for the Met prioritizes accessibility, sustainability and seamless integration with the museum’s expansive, eclectic, labyrinthine and sometimes disorienting campus.
“The wing is in New York, yet of the world,” Escobedo said in a statement. “It reflects the global nature of this great collection and also draws inspiration from the Met’s unique surroundings.”
Construction is slated to begin in 2026 and conclude in 2030. It is part of a larger $2 billion overhaul of the Met, which also includes renovations to the adjacent Michael C. Rockefeller Wing.
A rising star in global architecture, Escobedo studied architecture at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, then earned a master’s degree in art, design and the public domain at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. In recent years, she has taught at Columbia, Harvard, Rice and Yale.
Escobedo was born in Mexico City in 1979 to a doctor father and sociologist mother, and as a youth was always drawing or making models, though she didn’t decide to study architecture at university until “the last minute,” according to AD.
She began her professional career collaborating with Alejandro Alarcón, a Mexican architect whose designs reflect Mexico’s the cultural and social contexts of Mexico. Together, they founded the Perro Rojo studio in 2003 (when she was only 24), then in 2004 designed Casa Negra, a house in Valle de Bravo, México state, that is mounted on four tubes above the ground and is celebrated for its dark, geometric design and integration with the surrounding natural environment.
In 2006, she founded her own firm, which includes a studio in Colonia Juárez, in the center of Mexico City, where she spends about half her time — when not traveling or working in her other studio in New York in 2022. One of her first projects was the renovation of La Tallera, the residence and studio of Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros in Cuernavaca, Morelos.
Earlier this month, she was the subject of a 2,000-word article in the New York Times, in which Laurent Le Bon, the Pompidou president, said, “She’s not like those starchitects. She wants to learn about the story of the building.”
Escobedo’s portfolio includes the annual design of the Serpentine Pavilion in London and the upcoming renovation of Paris’ Pompidou Center. Her 2018 design of the former — “a delicate exercise in concrete brick,” including lattice walls that “played with space and changing light,” according to AD — earned her international recognition.
In 2019, she was named an International Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects and her studio was named one of the world’s “100+ Best Architecture Firms” by the magazine Domus.
Known for her minimalist yet poetic style, Escobedo draws on Mexican vernacular traditions while addressing contemporary needs. She has been labeled a trailblazer in the field, celebrated for bridging historical influences with innovative design.
“Frida Escobedo’s extraordinarily inspired, deeply thoughtful and dynamic design cements her standing as one of today’s most relevant architects,” said Met Director Max Hollein.
In addition to the Met and the Pompidou Centre, she is also working on residential buildings in Harlem and Brooklyn.
“The most beautiful thing about architecture is that you are always doing things for the first time in your life,” Escobedo told the newspaper El País last year.
With reports from Architectural Digest, Architectural Record, Curbed, El Economista and El País
