Nathan Friedman

Nathan Friedman is cofounder of the Mexico City-based design practice Departamento del Distrito and Professor in the Practice at the Rice University School of Architecture.

 

Projects by Departamento del Distrito have been exhibited internationally, including shows at the National Building Museum (Washington, D.C.), Het Nieuwe Instituut (Rotterdam), arc en rêve (Bordeaux), Museo Numismático Nacional (Mexico City), and the Graham Foundation (Chicago). The practice was an official contributor to the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial and received the 2022 Architectural League of New York Prize, recognized for a diverse body of work that includes residential, public, and curatorial projects. Friedman’s research focuses on the intersection of politics, identity, and the built environment. His work on the 19th-century constitution of the US-Mexico border and its material history was presented through the exhibition Attending Limits at the WUHO Gallery, Los Angeles, and the Bibliowicz Family Gallery, Cornell University, with support from the Graham Foundation. Friedman is a former editor of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Thresholds and his writing has been published in Art Journal, Log, MAS Context, Scapegoat, and Manifest.

 

Friedman joined Rice Architecture as a 2021-23 Wortham Fellow, and has taught previously at the Rhode Island School of Design, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Universidad Iberoamericana. Before founding Departamento del Distrito with Francisco Quiñones in 2017, he worked for Eisenman Architects, SMAQ Berlin, and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam, where he collaborated on numerous projects for both OMA and AMO including the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow. Friedman holds an S.M.Arch.S. degree from the Department of History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art at MIT and a B.Arch. from Cornell University.