The design for the new headquarters of Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, designed by Frida Escobedo Studio, has been selected by the State of Qatar from over 40 entries in an international competition. The complex will encompass 70,000 square meters and will be located on Doha Bay, transforming a prominent section of the city’s iconic Corniche.

The new building will preserve the visual lines of the iconic General Post Office, built in 1985, incorporating elements into its façade as part of a significant effort at adaptive reuse, while visually anchoring the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the site’s history.

The design by Frida Escobedo is conceived with special attention to human scale, focusing on the interplay of interior courtyards that generates a rhythmic composition of complementary volumes. This creates a complex, ascending structure with terraces offering panoramic views, rooted in local traditions and projected into the future. The building's exterior will form an enveloping structure composed of vertical pillars that balance shade, privacy, and transparency, while the welcoming interior will feature a series of green courtyards designed for reflection, gathering, and art.

This dialogue between architecture and landscape will extend to the General Post Office, whose ground floor will be transformed into an exhibition space that doubles as a covered garden. The project is based on rigorous sustainability principles, combined with the adaptive reuse of the site, which will reinforce the sense of unity within the overall urban composition.

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Architects
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Frida Escobedo Studio. Lead architect.- Frida Escobedo.

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Collaborators
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Engineer.- Buro Happold.
Landscape designer.- Studio Zewde.

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Client
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Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Qatar.

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Developer
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Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Qatar, Qatar Museums, Malcolm Reading Consultants.

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Area
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70,000 sqm.

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Dates
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Announced.- December 4, 2025.

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Location
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Doha Corniche, Qatar.

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Rendering
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Frida Escobedo Studio.

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Video
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Animation.- ATCHAIN.

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Frida Escobedo López (b. 1979, Mexico City) founded her practice in 2006, after four years as co-director of the architectural firm Perro Rojo. Her award-winning work has primarily focused on revitalising urban spaces that are often considered residual or forgotten. Frida Escobedo established her studio in Mexico City in 2006 and opened a studio in New York in 2022. The studio’s reputation was initially built on the strength of a series of projects in her native country, including the renovation of the Hotel Boca Chica (2008), the El Eco Pavilion (2010), and the expansion of La Tallera Siqueiros in Cuernavaca (2012). The studio gained international recognition in 2018, when Escobedo received the prestigious appointment to design the annual Serpentine Pavilion in London’s Kensington Gardens, becoming the youngest architect to date to undertake the project.

In 2004, she was awarded the Scholarship for Young Creators by the National Fund for Arts and Culture (FONCA), and in 2008, she was selected by Herzog & de Meuron as one of the architectural studios to participate in the Ordos 100 Project in Inner Mongolia, China. In 2009, she was a winner of the Young Architects Forum, organised by the Architectural League of New York. In 2013, she was selected as one of the three finalists for the Architecture programme at the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. She was nominated for the Arc Vision Prize for Women and the Iakov Chernikhov Prize. In 2014, she was selected as a finalist for the Designs of the Year at the Design Museum in London and was nominated for the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize of the Illinois Institute of Technology. In 2014, she won the Ibero-American Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism Prize (IX BIAU) in Rosario, Argentina. In 2017, she received the Emerging Voices Award from the Architectural League of New York.

Frida Escobedo was appointed in 2022 as the design architect for the new Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing for Modern and Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, becoming the youngest architect and first woman to design a building for the institution. In 2024, she was selected as a co-designer to lead architect Moreau Kusunoki to lead the renovation of the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Other major recent projects include The Ray Harlem (2025) in New York (with Handel Architects), a mixed-use project incorporating residences, commercial space, and the new home of the National Black Theatre; and Otis Plaza (2024) in San Francisco, with Fletcher Studio and support from Multistudio.

Frida Escobedo is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Architectural League of New York’s Young Architects Forum Award (2009), the BIAU Prize (2014), the Architectural Review Emerging Architecture Award (2016), and the Architectural League Emerging Voices Award (2017). In 2019, she was honoured as an International Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). Most recently, the Créateurs Design Association & Awards honoured Frida Escobedo with Le Prix Charlotte Perriand for 2024.

Frida Escobedo has taught at Universidad Iberoamericana, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, the Architectural Association of London, Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Rice University, and Yale University.

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Published on: December 5, 2025
Cite:
metalocus, ELVIRA PARÍS FERNÁNDEZ
"New headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Qatar by Frida Escobedo Studio" METALOCUS. Accessed
<http://www.metalocus.es/en/news/new-headquarters-ministry-foreign-affairs-qatar-frida-escobedo-studio> ISSN 1139-6415
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