The launch of the Serpentine gallery’s 25th pavilion today brings the Mexican architecture practice Lanza Atelier into the spotlight — the second time in less than a decade that Mexicans have captured London’s imagination and attention in Hyde Park (Frida Escobedo designed the pavilion in 2018).
It reminds us that our screens, feeds and inboxes are flooded these days with the work of Mexican creatives and their deft handling of tradition and modernity. Not since Luis Barragán fever in the 1980s have we been so engrossed in the places, spaces and furnishings of the estados, designed to reflect and embrace the nation’s lush landscapes, sweltering climate, passion for colour and love for local materials. To honour Lanza’s big reveal and capture the moment, we’ve rounded up six of our favourite studios taking on Mexico and the world.
Sordo Madaleno
Brutalism is the bread and butter of this prestige family practice in Mexico City (and now London, too). So when they were tapped for the first public contemporary art gallery in Los Cabos, Javier Sordo Madaleno Bringas and his team chose pigmented bush-hammered concrete as the material for raw-look five-metre walls. Called Arte Abierto Baja, the building plays with shadow from light and landscape, creating its own ever-changing art piece. The new 180sqm structure is set four metres below the surface of the oceanfront site and invites visitors into the open-air galleries via a 17-metre slope. The practice currently has hundreds of projects in the works across Latin America and Europe — including a new building for the Hungarian Museum of Natural History.
Daniel Orozco
The coastal hotels of Tulum seemingly decided en masse that an Orozco interior is what this moment needs. In the background, however, Daniel Orozco’s five-year-old Tulum boutique is disseminating the look more widely. Here, he displays totem-like tables and sculptures, lamps that seem threaded with wood beads, and stools with bulbous legs turned by hand. Each piece is made from cedar, jabín or parota wood sourced in Quintana Roo, which is dried in an oven to protect it from humidity, then moulded by local artisans into their unique shape. Three years ago he opened a showroom in Mexico City and in 2024 he took his stone sculptures on a tour of Louis Vuitton boutiques worldwide.
Comité de Proyectos
The popularity of their own furniture designs has given Andrea Flores and Lucía Soto of Comité de Proyectos an edge among home and hospitality clients. Stout upholstered chairs with an anachronistic, crafted quality literally set the tone in hotel lobbies and living rooms, rendered in ice cream colours and rich, earthy shades. They’re practical, with a quiet sense of humour. A recent installation at Casa Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo makes fun use of a disused space. But you can also spot the Comité’s work in hotels and homes across the country.
Tatiana Bilbao
With a family lineage in architecture and a 20-year practice of her own, Tatiana Bilbao Spamer is in demand from big cultural institutions and city politicians hunting for smart, ecological social housing. Her Mazatlan aquarium falls in the former category yet uses gestures from the latter. Inspired by Diego Rivera’s ‘Man Controller of the Universe’ mural, Bilbao sketched out a nature-harnessing project that appeared to have completely lost control of the nature (specifically the Sea of Cortez). Her ‘ruin’ dispels the conceit that we have any power to dominate the ocean, even as it helps to showcase the ocean’s most enchanting phenomena. The building’s silhouette bridges millennia though its interior embraces the latest cooling technology.
Maye Ruiz
What we’d call ‘maximalism’ is simply good energy to Maye Ruiz, who references the bright painted façades of San Miguel de Allende in her saturated colour schemes. The arty town in central Mexico is a place of great inspiration, with a flourishing design culture and hospitality industry of which Ruiz plays a major part, spreading her spirited palettes and kitsch bespoke furnishings. She recently collaborated with Comité de Proyectos (above) on a range of shapely chairs in homage to Anni Albers, and a red-all-over restaurant with wicker accents.
PPAA
A just-completed 10-room hotel showcases PPAA’s flair for lofty, contemporary, highly habitable spaces flooded with natural light yet kept cool by design. In La Martine, a central roof light draws light down through the stairwell and metal mesh offers privacy from the outside while maintaining clear views from within. The blank-slate frontage attracts curiosity with extreme subtlety. Principal Pablo Pérez Palacios adheres to a similar aesthetic in his social housing, retail and domestic projects in Mexico, the US and Middle East.
