Jaime Martinez was born in Monterrey, Mexico and is currently living in Mexico City. His work is influenced by his many fashionable friends and surroundings. Jaime’s photographs have been featured in many magazines including Fifi, Subterra, and Rolling Stone Germany. [via Feature Shoot]

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When I was in Mexico City in December I had the great pleasure of hanging with Mexican legendary artist Pedro Friedeberg. What? Never heard of him? I hadn’t either, until my first trip to Mexico City where I was introduced to his work at his retrospective at the National Museum. It was love at first sight. Check it, because this guy’s work is still, so current.

Each year, six million Mexican Catholic pilgrims journey to the Basilica de Guadalupe in Mexico City to pay homage to the Virgin of Guadalupe. In The Road to Tepeyac, Mexican visual artist Alinka Echeverria photographs 300 pilgrims bearing treasures of the Virgin to be blessed.

Anybody could roll down the list of bands that Mexico City’s Carlos Icaza is in, or credit him for his incredible work with the Vampi Soul people, but until you have met this brilliant, record collecting, drum-battering-anomaly in person, you have only read into a small semblance of what Icaza is all about. When I first met him, I had no idea who he was. He commented on a record I was playing at a bar and then a week later, my friends and I hadn’t missed a single gig he played in Chicago, including the loft party we all spun together the following Saturday. I have been addicted to this mix that he posted and it doesn’t even compare to his live sets. Who knew so many soul standards sounded twice as funky recorded in Mexico in the 60s.

Frontera 96 is a Mexico City retail and art space run by a design collective in the always hip Roma neighborhood. They sell t-shirts inspired by Mexico City indie rock bands, like Hello Seahorse! and Los Rebel Cats, with a revolving slate of groups coming in to sign autographs from time to time. The store is only open Friday through Sunday.

Most of their merchandise is sold through the Hupop brand (which runs an online store. You can order online and pick it up at the store). Women’s dresses, screen printed jackets and tees, paintings, jewelry, used vinyl, as well as some Ikea products (such as storage bins and bed sheets) fill out their interior design offerings. Books on urbanism and interior design are sometimes in English, but mostly in Spanish.

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Condesa DF is an uber-hip, boutique hotel in the heart of Mexico City’s stylish, tree-lined neighborhood of the same name. Housed in an architectural landmark building dating from 1928, the hotel and its restaurant exude style, energy, and creativity. Occupying the ground floor of an airy, high-ceiling open atrium is the buzzing restaurant and bar, where splashes of bright turquoise cut through minimalistic white, black, and brown tones.

Dining at Condesa DF isn’t as consistently breathtaking as the hotel, but its fusion cuisine, heavenly influenced by Pan-Asian flavors, still holds its own against the fashionable backdrop. The rock shrimp tempura with spicy mayonnaise pops in your mouth and ends with a much-welcomed fiery kick.

Fish and chips – truffled, of course – and sweet sea bass with caramelized tequila, are also tasty options. To wash it down, go for one of Condesa DF’s infamous Jamaica margheritas made with hibiscus, or better yet, their own private label tequila and mezcal.

Dutch uber-firm OMA, headed by Rem Koolhaas, has created this concept in Mexico City to symbolize the coming two hundred years of Mexico’s independence. There are many layers of symbolism in this building, from Mayan pyramids to which part of the building controls the park and which part controls the city, to the fact that the bulge of the building is below the centre height, and that it all happens on a relatively small footprint. Most of all, in this building there is a barely contained energy that seems near to release and it may be that this is what Torre Bicentenario represents.

Mexican architecture firm Senosiain Arquitectos recently designed a shell-shaped dwelling for a Mexico City couple. The owners are already living in their new abode with their two very happy children. The structure is maintenance-free and earthquake proof, and is full of soothing greenery and smooth, rounded surfaces.