Graphic design Jay Shell's has spent the past couple of years marking street intersections mentioned in rap songs with new signage, the lyrics!
Read MorePhoto by Aymann Ismail/ANIMALNewYork
Le Corbusier and Josephine Baker aboard "Lutetia", 1929. Image Courtesy of FLC.
Le Corbusier and Race Relations: 10 Things Architecture School Didn't Teach You About Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier's musings on black culture, especially music, is one of the lesser known aspects of his life. Here is a list of ten things about Le Cobusier and Black Culture that you probably never learned while in architecture school.
Read MoreMichael Ford, Hip Hop Architecture lecture at University of Illinois Urbana Champaign.
Press Release - Hip Hop Architecture Lecture Tour
Press Release
September 19, 2015 - The University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC) hosted Michael Ford during his Hip Hop Architecture lecture tour. Ford was a keynote speaker during the National Organization of Minority Architects Students (NOMAS) Symposium titled, Breaking The Glass Ceiling.
Read MoreHip Hop Architecture at University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
The annual NOMAS Symposium is hosted by the National Organization of Minority Architecture Students. This year's theme: "Breaking the Glass Ceiling" is geared towards raising awareness to minorities who have been able to break barriers and overcome obstacles to become successful within the field of Architecture. It will feature a special lecture from the Hip Hop Architect Michael Ford and many more activities, such as mini-lectures and round table discussions--which will be led by some professional architects and some of the School of Architecture's very own faculty.
Read MoreWill.i.am and architect Zaha Hadid have collaborated on special editions of the recently announced PULS smart cuff, which they showed off on stage together at WIRED 2014 in London.
Will.i.am Collaborates with Zaha Hadid
Will.i.am has announced his latest design endeavor with iamPULS, a smartband concept from his creative studio i.am+. the ‘PULS’ cuff boasts a curved OLED screen and is untethered, giving it the ability to make/receive calls and operate independently of any smartphone using SIM cards instead of bluetooth connectivity. the wearable device features ‘AneedA’ – an intuitive personal assistant powered by nuance communications that uses voice commands for texts and emails, plays music, posts to social media, queues maps and a fitness app, schedules appointments, make calls, and more. the smartwatch is slated to hit shelves in the US and the UK in late 2014, with a series of limited edition designs created by zaha hadid.
Read More
Photo By: Nicholas Oran
Hip Hop As Modernism's Post Occupancy Report:Part 2
Hip Hop has established itself as a gravitas culture that crosses borders of race, ethnicity, class, religion and professions. Members of the hip hop generation carry the residue of the culture into all spaces they inhabit and their individual works are seasoned with its’ flavor. As professionals continue to argue the academic validity of hip hop and disseminate the social significance of rap, it is time architectural professionals learn the benefit the culture provides to its’ practitioners.
Read More
Photo By: Adidas Big Sean at Detroit Cass Tech
Big Sean Builds Music Studio at Cass Tech High School in Detroit
Rapper Big Sean unveiled a new music studio at his alma mater, Cass Technical High School in Detroit Michigan. Cass Tech is the alma mater of many of Detroit's black architects and designers, including myself and Rainy Hamilton Jr. Cass Tech is recognized as one the best high schools in the nation and is one of the only Detroit Public Schools which requires students to take admissions test and requires a minimum grade point average for enrolled students. Big Sean graduated from CT with a 3.7 gpa and despite many scholarship offers, he choose to follow his true dream, entertainment.
Read Morehttps://architizer.com
Frank Gehry's First Time Meeting Jay Z
"I met this guy Jay Z years ago. I sat next to him at lunch, and I didn’t know much about bippity boppity. I said to him, who was the first rapper? I didn’t know what else to say. He gave me a few names that sounded like bippity boppity, and I said, “Would you consider James Joyce?” He said, “Who dat?” So I sent him a complete works of James Joyce. It sounds pure rap. "
Read MoreBjarke Ingels Advice to Young Architects
Renowned Danish architect Bjarke Ingels here offers his architectural advice to aspiring architects and explains why we must , "Care about the people we are designing for. Understand what they want and use that as the driving force for our design."
Read More
Photo By: Nick Oran
Hip Hop As Modernisms' Post Occupancy Report:Part 1
The following audio and related transcript is an excerpt from my lecture, Hip Hop Inspired Architecture, at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design on April 8, 2015. During the lecture I presented my project, Urban Renewal vs Urban Reality, which juxtaposes a series of hip hop music videos and architecture documentaries exhibiting The Golden Era of Hip Hop as a post occupancy report for inner city dwellers inhabitation of modernist visions.
Read MoreArchitect Frank Gehry was in Oviedo to collect the Prince of Asturias prize. Photograph: J l Cereijido/EPA
Frank Gehry Quote - 98% of What Gets Built Today is Bullshit
In this world we are living in, 98% of everything that is built and designed today is pure shit. There’s no sense of design, no respect for humanity or for anything else. They are damn buildings and that’s it. - Frank Ghery
Read MorePresident Obama Wanted To Be An Architect
President Obama spoke in Salem, Oregon on March 21,2008 and mentioned his dream to become an architect at an early age. An audience member shouts that President Obama would have been, "An architect of change!".
Read More
A Neighborhood Watch sign stands outside The Retreat at Twin Lakes gated community where Trayvon Martin was shot by George Michael Zimmerman.
(Photo by Roberto Gonzalez/Getty Images)
Guilty As Charged: Urban Planning and the Death of Trayvon Martin
Time and again, the mainstream media has analyzed and debated the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin on February 26, 2012, inside the perimeter of the Retreat at Twin Lakes, a gated community in Sanford, Florida. In the search for answers that make any sense of Martin’s untimely death, many have sounded proposals to rescind Florida’s stand-your-ground law. Far fewer, however, have called for reconsideration of the urban planning practices that continue to perpetuate the gated community typology, which — by nature of its spatial organization — was not only the site of Martin’s death but also, in part, the cause. Developers, urban planners, and lawmakers must be held accountable for their roles in building communities of exclusionary gates and poorly planned public spaces, where the physical environment validates discriminatory sentiment that renders the unusual as suspicious.
Read MorePharrell Williams discusses starchitecture with his guests Alex Gorlin, architect, and Daniel Arsham, artist. Gorlin then discusses his work with Common Ground, a non-profit that helps produce housing for homeless people that positively impacts the neighborhood. Arsham discusses the multi-dimensional nature of the different mediums in which he works.
Pharrell Williams Talks Starchitecture
Artst Talk, is a new take on the talk show format hosted by award winning producer, artist, designer, and businessman Pharrell Williams. Each episode features two special guests at different career stages to discuss their work, motivations, inspirations, and philosophies. In this episode, "Pharrell Williams discusses starchitecture with his guests Alex Gorlin, architect, and Daniel Arsham, artist. Gorlin then discusses his work with Common Ground, a non-profit that helps produce housing for homeless people that positively impacts the neighborhood.
Read More
Towers in A Park vs Parks in a Tower
Le Corbusier’s Plan Voison, or City for Three Million, introduced a new order to embody what he thought were the spirit and needs of the Machine Age. His towers in a park sought to provide open space to the modern city, though in the end it destroyed the dense urban fabric necessary for vibrant urbanism. This Evolo Skyscraper competition submission by Chris Lee and Marcus Carter inverts the building-park relationship by pulling the park into the building thus creating a new typology of the skyscraper: Parks in a Tower.
Read MoreHip Hop Inspired Architecture lecture by Michael Ford and Eryk "The Arch-E-Tech" Christian at Madison College, in Madison, Wisconsin on April 29, 2015 at 12:30pm.
Hip Hop Architecture at Madison College
On April 29, 2015 my DJ, Eryk "The Arch-E-Tech" Christian and I will deliver a lecture on Hip Hop Inspired Architecture at Madison College located in Madison Wisconsin. This lecture is a continuation of my current lecture tour, which has included an exhibit at the 2014 AIA Convention in Chicago Illinois, lectures at University of Detroit Mercy, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, Syracuse University and Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Read More
Winning logo created by Michael Ford for AIA Wisconsin's Pop Up Logo Contest.
AIA Wisconsin Pop Up Contest
I recently won the logo competition for the AIA SW Wisconsin's Pop Up Logo Contest. After creating the logo, I could not stop, I had to design the pop up experience as well and tie it to Hip Hop Architecture. The Pop Up Experience is called "The Beat Box". The box, made of 4' x 8' plywood sheets, unfolds to create a space which allows for programming which provides opportunities for underrepresented youth to BEAT the odds and become architectural professionals.
Trillusion Exhibit - Surface as Space, Space as Surface
Trillusion exhibit explores the synthesis between furniture and graphics blurs the boundaries between reality and illusion. Surface becomes space. Space becomes surface.
Read MoreNOMA Rise - 2015 National Organization of Minority Architects Conference
The National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) is pleased to announce the 43rd Annual International Conference & Exposition, taking place October 15-17, 2015 at the Sheraton New Orleans in downtown New Orleans, Louisiana. The Conference theme this year is RISE: Social Justice by Design.
Read More
Low Income Housing + Shipping Containers
Here are a couple of renders I created to visualize new concepts for inner city, low income housing utilizing shipping containers. The design is a mixture of current architectural styles, projects and design theories on low income housing.
Read More