The Wisconsin Chapter of The American Institute of Architects named Michael Ford, AIA, NOMA as a recipient of The 2022 Yong Architect of The Year. Congratulations to Michael Ford and the other two outstanding young architect award recipients, Matthew Clapper, AIA and Brandon Reinke, AIA.
Read the full story on Wisconsin State Journal
Michael Ford: All I Can Do Is Not Enough Yet (Architect Magazine)
George Floyd wasn't the first or last Black person to be killed by the hands of police or vigilantes, but his documented murder helped spark a rise in discourse on systemic racism. In this 15-part series, members of the design community share how their conversations and view of and place in the profession have changed in a year that also saw an increase in attacks—many fatal—against people of color as well as the lives of millions more gone due to COVID-19.
Here, Michael Ford, AIA, the Madison, Wis.–based founder of The Hip Hop Architecture Camp and the director of design at the Universal Hip Hop Museum, in the Bronx, N.Y., discusses his work as a full-time activist and why, in 2021, he still drives with his license and registration atop his dashboard.
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Architect Michael Ford, photographed by Hugo Yu at The Robey in Chicago
Wallpaper Magazine: Meet Michael Ford, The Hip Hop Architect
“The American Midwest is shaking up the world of architecture. Our profile series, part of our Next Generation 2022 project, explores exciting young studios presenting bold ideas for a better future for the built environment. Meet Michael Ford
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The Hip Hop Architecture Camp and Bergmeyer Partner for 2022 Summer Scholarship
Bergmeyer, the award-winning design collaborative based in Boston and Los Angeles, is partnering with The Hip Hop Architecture Camp (The HHAC) for its first-ever Scholarship and Internship Program for underrepresented high school seniors and college freshmen pursuing a career in architectural design. Applications are open for submission from August 30th, 2021, through December 10th, 2021, and the recipient awarded the honor will receive a $1500.00 scholarship and a week-long internship with Bergmeyer in 2022.
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Image: CSPRDetroit
The Hip Hop Architect surprises student at his alma-mater with $10,000 scholarship
December 6, 2021 was Mike Ford Day at Cass Tech High School in Detroit, and the Hip-Hop Architect celebrated by giving away a $10,000.00 scholarship to Cass Tech senior Sarah Shaw-Nichols who is headed to college to study architecture.
Sarah is currently considering University of Michigan, University of Detroit Mercy and Cornell.
The $10,000.00 scholarship was funded by a continued Hip Hop Architecture Camp partner, Herman Miller.
Check out the scholarship surprise which Ford captured on Facebook live.
Read MoreHerman Miller x Mike Ford
In his first piece of furniture, Michael Ford has remixed the popular Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman (ELO) introduced in 1956 by husband and wife, Charles and Ray Eames as a “special refuge from the strains of modern living” with handwritten names of victims of racism in the US as a stark reminder that these Black men, women, and children were not afforded the privilege of refuge - those who died at the hands of racial violence.
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Michael Ford and Herman Miller Reveal a Remixed Eames Lounge Chair for Discussing Real Change
he Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman is an undeniable status symbol in architecture and entertainment circles, but Michael Ford, Assoc. AIA, wants to take it to a whole new meaning. The iconic two-piece set, created in 1956 by the venerated design duo Ray and Charles Eames, has long carried its original tagline as a “special refuge from the strains of modern living.” Considering the country's history of systemic racism, which manifests itself in nearly every measurable data point, Ford wanted to know, “Where is that 'refuge' from the strains of 'modern living' for Black Americans? What does that 'refuge' mean for Black boys and girls today?”
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Photo by: Kai Brown
Architects, Designers and Planners: #BlackLivesMatter and You Must Speak Up!
There is a stain on your masterpiece.
Martin Luther King Jr, the revolutionist – not the watered down, palatable, let’s all get along version that white people love – once said, “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.” The silence of the architecture community in authentically addressing the blatant injustice that has begrudged African American people in the United States layers that stain.
The continued, unprovoked and senseless murders of Black people in public spaces, oftentimes in broad daylight at the hands of the power-hungry police and racist citizens living out childhood cops-and-robber fantasies with Black bodies, is infuriating. Architects have been mostly silent as their work, meticulously designed, constructed and deemed the crowning jewel of urban skylines, serves as the backdrop of injustice.
There is blood on the concrete in front of your storefront systems where Black women who look like my wife, Black men who look like me and Black boys who look like my son, have taken their last breath. And there, your masterpiece stands right next to a stain.
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Eastern State Penitentiary in 1949. The prison in Philadelphia, now a historic site, once advocated solitary confinement.Credit...Bettman/Getty Images
There’s No Reason for an Architect to Design a Death Chamber
“[Michael] Ford, who is African-American, also added: “The death of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and many before them provided an opportunity for all of us to question how our morals and values are practiced in our daily lives, including our work as designers and architects.”
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Camp facilitator Phil Robie demonstrates some design details.
KARA HAYES SMITH
At Hip Hop Architecture Camp, Kids Inspired To Build Both Beats And Buildings
The Hip Hop Architecture Camp
Architectural Digest Covers The Hip Hop Architecture Camp
On a mild afternoon in Washington, D.C., a makeshift stage has formed in the entryway of the District Architecture Center. Middle-schooler Iyana Benjamin adjusts the arms of her gold-rimmed, circular glasses from beneath a gray beanie and smiles as she looks up from her notebook and out to a few rows of folding chairs, accommodating nine other kids and a few adults. A beat emanating from a nearby laptop breaks the silence, and Benjamin begins to rap. She raps in a matter-of-fact yet firm tone on topics that are well beyond her years, from the swift gentrification of her neighborhood to the overshadowed African American architectswho first built it.
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Complex Magazine Covers: The Hip Hop Architecture Design Cypher
Huge thanks to Complex for covering The Hip Hop Architecture Design Cypher I hosted at Autodesk in San Francisco back in February 2018. The Design Cypher is based on the curriculum of The Hip Hop Architecture Camp® and challenged some of the top lyricists in hop hop to join some of the top young design minds in architecture to come together and create designs in a fast paced, cross disciplinary environment. The artist included Lupe Fiasco, ChinoXL, Daylty and Nikki Jean, architects and designers included Michael Ford, (The Hip Hop Architect), Eryk Christian, Bryan C Lee Jr, Jason Pugh, Pascale Sablan, and Julia Weatherspoon.
Read Full Article by Complex
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Fast Company: Meet the inspiring leaders pushing the environmental movement
I’m happy to announce that I am one of “Grist 50 Fixers”. I was selected from over 1000 creatives who were nominated by peers. “Each year, the environmental news site Grist makes a list of 50 innovators working on creative and ambitious solutions to challenges like climate change. “There’s a lot of bad news these days, and I think we’re really intentionally trying to tell stories about what’s possible,” says Andrew Simon, director of content at Grist. Here are a handful of the “fixers” in this year’s edition of the Grist 50”
Read MoreThe Hip Hop Architecture Camp Is About More Than Architecture
ARCHITECT captured a snippet of the experience firsthand when HHAC founder Michael Ford brought the camp to Washington, D.C., last week.
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Chicago Hip Hop Architecture Camp. Image by M.O.D Media Productions
What If Hip Hop Can Make Architecture and Planning Better?
In Feb. 2017, the city of Madison, Wis., was developing its comprehensive plan. Michael Ford noticed that the plan, which projects 20 years into the future, had no input from young people.
“You have these planning meetings and it’s the same people in the room,” says Ford. “We were looking 20 years into the future, we have young people who are going to inherit that plan while they are in their prime. They should be at the table talking about it.”
So he pitched the office of Mayor Paul Soglin. The way that the meetings were set up right now, he told the mayor’s office, it’s not interesting to young people. But he had a “crazy idea to do something with hip-hop.”
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Michael Ford's SuperSoul Sunday Short Film by Oprah Winfrey Network
"It's about more than just a building. It's about the people, the community and literally making something out of nothing. The goal for us is not only to get more students of color invested in those careers but also to reimagine themselves –and reimagine what their world can look like."
In this SuperSoul Short Film presented by American Family Insurance, watch how Mike Ford is fusing his passions of hip-hop music and architecture to inspire young people of color to think critically and dream fearlessly about their neighborhoods and their communities.
To learn how you can pursue and protect your dreams, visit www.amfam.com
Read more: http://www.oprah.com/own-super-soul-sunday/the-hip-hop-architect#ixzz5V4CDcgGY
TINKERING AROUND Christian Adams, 9, uses the design program Tinkercad to imagine a new city ROLANDA MASSEY—HIP HOP ARCHITECTURE
Time Magazine Covers The Hip Hop Architecture Camp "Building to the Beat"
When Mike Ford was a kid, he dreamed of being a car designer. But when he was 11, things changed. That’s when he went to a car-design program and ended up learning about architecture instead.
“As a youngster, I was lucky enough to have some conversations with the people running that summer program,” he told TIME for Kids. Talking with designers there sparked Ford’s interest in architecture. He went on to pursue it as a career.
Now Ford hopes to spark the same interest in other young people. Last year, he launched his own architecture program for kids ages 10 to 17. But his program has an unexpected twist. Campers base their designs on hip-hop lyrics. (Read on to learn how this works.)
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Houston Hip Hop Architecture Camp participant uses Autodesk Tinkercad.
CNET: Autodesk and The Hip Hop Architecture Camp Seeks to Reach Future Architects Through Hip Hop
Take architecture. Just 4 percent of architects are black and only 0.3 percent are black women, according to the American Institute of Architects.
Autodesk, which makes computer aided design software (CAD) used in many industries including architecture, hopes to start changing that by sponsoring Hip Hop Architecture Camp. The traveling camp will more than double the number of cities to 17 it visits this spring and summer, in the second year of the program, Autodesk said Thursday
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The Bronx Hip Hop Architecture Camp
Photo by M.O.D. Media Photography
In the Bronx, a hip-hop architecture camp teaches students about creative placemaking
"Perhaps moreso than any other genre of music, hip-hop is shaped by its environment. The genre’s origins date back to one sweaty summer night in the Bronx in 1973, when DJ Kool Herc debuted a new style of spinning records at his sister’s back-to-school party. And as the style became more popular and took off, one thing linked the artists who shaped it: they were often influenced by what they saw in their own neighborhoods.
For example, in Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s 1982 hit “The Message,” the group raps about its South Bronx home: “Broken glass everywhere / People pissing on the stairs, you know they just don’t care / I can’t take the smell, can’t take the noise / Got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice.”
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Chingy Judges Rap Competition At The St. Louis Hip Hop Architecture Camp
Before the competition, the students had plenty of questions for Chingy. They wanted to know what it was like to attend the BET Awards. They were curious as to inspired him to make music. They wanted to know how old he was when he first started performing. After being inspired by Michael Jackson, Chingy was 12 years old when he started pursuing a career in music – the same age as several of the camp members."
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