FELIPE ESCUDERO
Founder + Director
Felipe Escudero is an award-winning Ecuadorean-Brazilian architect and designer, with a practice that bridges gaps between future possibilities and ancient knowledge in a deeply felt human experience. Based between Quito, Ecuador and Madrid, Spain, Escudero’s aesthetic is distinctly contemporary and almost otherworldly; the design of his finished projects are often so clean, surreal, and calming that the final photography is indistinguishable from a digitally generated image. A go-to architect for a new, innovative, and engaging perspective on South American style, Escudero has designed homes for leaders of Latin American industries, restaurants for innovative Ecuadorian chefs, large-scale multifunctional developments, and laboratories for the region's foremost researchers.
An accomplished architect, Escudero’s work is grounded in creating inspiring, dreamlike spaces with an organic and contemporary signature aesthetic that is bright, engaging, and draws inspiration from nature in innovative ways. Escudero’s practice is deeply informed by the landscape of South America, drawing from the impressive, powerful, and awe-inspiring natural topography of the Andes to the extraordinary biodiversity of the Amazon.
Escudero’s style embraces the respect and reverence for nature that Latin America inspires, using clean lines and wide, open spaces to allow the surrounding environment to become a defining element of the buildings he creates. He often recreates natural, ephemeral phenomena with materials such as steel, glass, and concrete, engaging the space between natural and artificial, permanent and impermanent. These explorations of materiality and form are prevalent in Escudero’s work and demonstrates the respect for natural materials and craftsmanship as well as the potential for new technologies and innovation that defines his aesthetic.
Beyond his architectural practice, Escudero’s work also bridges into art and design under his brand Obio, an experimental branch of Estudio Felipe Escudero, working across different mediums to create unique and site-specific artworks and furniture pieces. Obio also has produced clothing and jewelry lines on its own and in collaboration with other brands, each of which have stemmed from Escudero’s explorations of materials, form, and new technologies as an offshoot of his building projects.
Escudero’s work has been included in exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Arts, the Architectural Association in London, Arte BA in Buenos Aires. Recent collaborators on design explorations have included Mercedes Benz, Adidas, and On-Shoes.
Prior to opening his eponymous studio in Quito in 2015, Escudero worked as an architect at Heatherwick Studio (2013-2014), MAD Architects (2008-2010), and at Space4architecture (2007-2008). He received his MA from the Architectural Association in London and his BA from Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, after studying on a scholarship in Paris and Rome.