Frida Escobedo, the Founder and Principal of the Mexico City- and New York-based Frida Escobedo Studio, has been awarded the contract to design the new headquarters for Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The top architect will be working as a team with Buro Happold engineers and Studio Zewde landscape designers on the project.

Created to establish a more visible civic presence for the nation’s diplomatic service and offer the public unprecedented access to the ministry complex, the project will transform a prominent section of the city’s iconic Corniche.

Rising beside the waters of Doha Bay, the 70,000-sq-m building will be a combination of new construction and the adaptive reuse of a beloved historic structure at the site. The initiation of the plan to create the new complex aims at making this building the first major one to be constructed in decades in the coastal area that curves northward from Qatar’s seat of government, the Amiri Diwan.

To enhance the visibility of the ministry’s mission of mediation and cultural diplomacy, the 1985 General Post Office – known for its distinctive modernist ‘pigeonholes’ – will be assimilated into the complex.