Architectural Digest Covers The Hip Hop Architecture Camp

March 21, 2019

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.

Michael Ford's SuperSoul Sunday Short Film by Oprah Winfrey Network

October 26, 2018

"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

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

August 22, 2018

"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.”

What is Hip Hop Architecture? UT Austin Platform Publication

November 28, 2017

PLATFORM is the annual magazine of The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. It serves as a “platform” for the school to investigate the intersection of its research, practice, and pedagogic interests with a broader audience.

Each issue of Platform features thought-provoking articles of topical interest in the disciplines of Architecture, Architectural History, Community and Regional Planning, Historic Preservation, Interior Design, Landscape Architecture, Sustainable Design, and Urban Design. Guest editors selected from the School of Architecture’s faculty develop a new theme or prompt for the publication each year and drive its conceptual direction.

This issue, titled Convergent Voices, is edited by Nichole Wiedemann and Charlton Lewis and centers on a conversation between contributors with expertise ranging from Architectural History and Landscape Architecture to Community and Regional Planning. It represents a dynamic collection of distinct voices and viewpoints brought together by a shared concern for the inequities in our cities and built environments and the urgent need to address these inequities.

Austin Hip Hop Architecture Camp Music Video

August 6, 2017

The Hip Hop Architecture Camp™ Music Video for "Push, Slide, Pause" By: The Hip Hop Architecture Camp Camp Location: Huston - Tillotson University Song Produced by: Syx Synce (http://notesfornotes.org/austin/) website: www.hiphoparchitecture.com The Hip Hop Architecture Camp™ is a one week intensive experience, designed to introduce under represented youth to architecture, urban planning, creative place making and economic development through the lens of hip hop culture.

The Beats And Rhymes Of Hip-Hop Are Changing How We Design Our Cities

August 6, 2017

"From Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five rapping in their 1982 classic “New York New York” about “Staring at a skyscraper reaching into heaven / When over in the ghetto I’m livin’ in hell,” to Jay Z rhyming on 2017’s “Marcy Me” that “I’m from Marcy Houses, where the boys die by the thousand,” hip-hop has always had an intimate relationship with the architecture of cities. But what if the low-income youth of color who live in the ghettos and housing projects of Gotham — or Los Angeles or Detroit — had the technical know-how to redesign their hometowns and create buildings that serve their communities?

Anticipating change means understanding your clients

May 1, 2017

On the final day of AIA Conference on Architecture 2017, a panel of innovators and a famed behavioral scientist took the stage in Orlando with a theme of "Anticipate Change," addressing what's next for architecture and design's evolution.

The panel, led by Frances Anderton, host of DnA: Design and Architecture, featured Michael Ford, Assoc. AIA; Cheryl McAfee, FAIA; and Nóra Demeter, Intl. Assoc. AIA, all speaking to the opportunities at architecture's frontier. "The theme today should be called 'affect change,' because each of these designers is really trying, and achieving, to steer the profession in new directions in terms of access and architectural expression itself," Anderton said.

CityLab: The Future of 'Hip-Hop Architecture'

March 27, 2017

Ford is currently helping lead a design justice movement around that idea. He’s also working as the lead architect for the forthcoming Universal Hip Hop Museum, which he calls “the first representation of hip-hop architecture in the world.” In February, Ford launched a hip-hop architecture youth camp in Madison, Wisconsin, where city youth worked with city planners on the Imagine Madison city comprehensive plan. He hopes to replicate that in other cities this year.

Why Diversity in Architecture Matters for Communities and the Bottom Line

March 7, 2017

Diversity is good for business. According to a McKinsey & Company report, U.S. public companies with diverse executive boards have a 95 percent higher return on equity than those without. Bullock echoes this point: “A firm will be more financially successful if it has more women and people of color as part of its workforce.”

Firms can remain relevant, foster innovation, come up with better solutions for the communities they serve, and improve their bottom line by taking concrete steps to create a culture that fosters diversity in architecture. “Diversity and inclusion does not happen by itself,” Bullock says.

“Express Yourself” Shows Off Unique Visions for Madison’s Future

February 16, 2017

The energy for week one of the innovative Hip-Hop Architecture Camp at the Madison Central Library was going to be tough to beat, but week two was lively and spirited in its own right as area youth came together to explore architecture, urban planning, and economic development through the lens of hip-hop culture while simultaneously aligning with the City of Madison’s Planning Department’s mission to gather and use opinions of each and every Madisonian to update the City’s 20-Year Comprehensive Plan.

Read the entire article here

The Hip Hop Architecture Camp

January 31, 2017

The Hip Hop Architecture Camp is a month long camp with a mission is to expose underrepresented middle and high school students to architecture, urban planning and economic development through the lens of hip hop culture. The camp sessions will take place every Saturday during the month of February at Madison's Central Library.

The Hip Hop Architect's Recent Publications

December 8, 2016

Below is a list of the recent publications which focus on my research involving the intersection of hip hop culture and architecture.

Youths fly a kite in a street bordered with firegutted buildings in the South Bronx section of New York City in June, 1977. The Carter Administration has agreed to revive urban renewal projects in an effort to revive the neighborhood. | AP Images

The hip-hop architect on how music and the environment can influence one another

October 27, 2016

Thanks to Curbed for the article.

"From its early roots in the Bronx to its current status as a worldwide cultural movement, hip-hop has never lost its street-level sensibility. When writing songs, rappers and lyricists trade in the currency of credibility, constantly dropping the names of street corners, city neighborhoods, even specific buildings and housing projects to connect listeners with the urban environment.

Hip-hop is often about place. And, according to Ford, it is place—often poorly designed, underfunded, and cut off from the rest of the city through bad urban planning and structural racism—that birthed the genre. Ford, who has been tapped to design the forthcoming Universal Hip-Hop Museum in the Bronx, has helped coin the term “hip-hop architecture,” popularizing the concept as a lens for looking at the intersections of culture and the built environment.

But it’s not just about looking back at the ways urban planning and housing policy created the environment for new forms of music; it’s how the ethics and ethos of hip-hop can help inspire new solutions for designing our cities."

Read the Full Article Here

Chuck D by Askem "The Time I Get To Arizona"

Chuck D and Hip Hop Architecture

October 8, 2016

Legendary hip hop artist Chuck D of the dynamic duo, Public Enemy shared a couple of his architectural hand renderings in Tweets revealing he once wanted to become a architectural designer.

Hip Hop Architecure Featured at SXSWEco

September 30, 2016

Michael Ford, Assoc. AIA, is a finalist (and a recently added keynote speaker) and will be showcasing how hip-hop can be a catalyst to engage underrepresented groups in the field of architecture.

“I will be sharing my concept for the Universal Hip Hop Museum mobile experience," he says, "which was developed alongside hip-hop pioneers. We plan on touring in various cities with the mission to showcase hip-hop culture while also collecting regional specific, undocumented hip-hop histories and their relationship to the built environment.”

How Bad Urban Planning Led to The Birth Of A Billion Doallar Genre

September 19, 2016

"Life in the so-called inner city has always been a major theme in hip-hop. From the desolate state of the Bronx Projects described in Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message” to the poor conditions in parts of Brooklyn and Queens recounted by artists like Jay Z, Biggie, and Nas, rappers have used their music to offer a glimpse into urban spaces across the United States. For decades, they’ve used verses and hooks to allude to the relationship between hip-hop and architecture — overcrowded, dilapidated towers have been the backdrop of the genre since its inception. But that relationship is more significant than it appears to be, says designer Mike Ford, whose pioneering research in the field of hip-hop-inspired architecture has earned him a fitting sobriquet: The Hip-Hop Architect. "

SXSW Eco Session Highlight: Hip Hop Architecture + the Just City

July 1, 2016

This session will discuss the cultural and colloquial implications of architecture in the built environment through the lens of Hip Hop and Design Justice. Focusing on the intersection of theory and practice, we will explore hip hop as a revolutionary approach to understanding, conceiving, and generating architecture for a just city. Showing these processes in action, we will share the unique, cross disciplinary design process for the Universal Hip Hop Museum.

Destruction By Design: The Public Housing Of Mice and Men - Part 1

December 6, 2015

In this series of Juxtaposed, I remix West Coast Rap All-Stars' "We're All In The Same Gang" music video with the audio of John B Calhoun's research on social crowding and aggression. The video, which I first shared during my Hip Hop Architecture lecture at Harvard's Graduate School of Design, details how the built environment influences behavior.

Spike Lee's "Chiraq" and The History of Public Housing

December 6, 2015

Following an extended screening of Spike Lee's new film "Chiraq" a heated exchange occurs between Spike and Umi Selah during a questions and answer session. The exchange brought the seldom told history of the systematic destruction of working-class and poor African American communities to the forefront of discussion. Ultimate, Umi Selah was looking to halt historical discourse and acceptance of the black ghetto's existence solely becaue of the "cultural behaviors" of black and brown people. Just as I, Umi Selah looks to expose the conscious efforts of our profession to absolve the most powerful shapers of society, architects, urban planners and social scientists from their responsibilities.