LONDON.- The V&A and London Design Festival, with support from the government of Mexico, have selected Mexican architect, Frida Escobedo to create an installation in the V&A’s John Madejski Garden this summer to mark the Year of Mexico in the United Kingdom.

Entitled ‘You know you cannot see yourself so well as by reflection’, Escobedo created a pavilion, inspired by Tenochtitlán, the Mexican city that was built on a lake. Referencing the multicultural influences that coexist in contemporary Mexico, the pavilion is a flexible space made up of layers of reflective surfaces that can be moved and adapted to hold a wide variety of events and activities.

Describing her plans for the V&A garden, Escobedo said: “The pavilion is an abstraction of this first settlement in the lake: a mirrored system of platforms that resembles the city’s grid and the sheen of the water as it was first described by Cortez’s men. The platforms can be arranged in different configurations, making it a dynamic and flexible space that adapts to a number of events. The reflective surface integrates the pavilion with its surroundings, becoming a link between past and present, between context and a new common territory.”

Mexican Embassy Ambassador Diego Gomez-Pickering said of the collaboration: "We are delighted to be working with the V&A and the London Design Festival to bring the work of this talented Mexican architect to London this summer; it will be a highlight of our year-long-programme of the Year of Mexico in the United Kingdom, in which we will show the diversity of the cultural heritage of Mexico, its rich history and strong traditions."

Escobedo’s work was selected from a shortlist of submissions by four distinguished Mexican architects and designers. The installation will open at the end of May and remain in place throughout the London Design Festival (19-27 September), closing on 2 October. It will provide a platform for a changing programme of events and activities.

Frida Escobedo (b. 1979) has a degree in architecture and urbanism from the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and since 2006 has been working as an independent architect.

Recently she finished her Masters in Art, Design and the Public Domain at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. In 2003 she founded with Alejandro Alarcón the studio ‘Perro Rojo’. In 2004 she received the Scholarship for YoungCreators in Mexico and in 2008 was a winner of the Young Architects Forum by the Architectural League in Nueva York. From 2007 to 2010 she was teaching at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. In 2012 her work was represented in the Mexican Pavilion at the Biennale in Venice and at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, in San Francisco.