Photo By: Nick Oran
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 MoreGEICO TV Spot, 'Push It: It's What You Do' Featuring Salt-N-Pepa Whether you're in an elevator or taking a baby class, be prepared to be ambushed by Salt-N-Pepa who will tell you to push. Besides pushing, we're all likely to switch to GEICO.
Europe’s first music hotel is here - in the heart of Berlin. Located directly on the banks of the river Spree, and at the epicentre of the music, fashion and creative scene, a new lifestyle hotel that has yet to meet its match in Europe: the nhow Berlin. The nhow Berlin is located right next to Universal Music and MTV Europe.
Read MoreCheck out this video of the "Beatbox" which brings together architecture and music through experience and form.
Beatbox by Asif Khan - Image courtesy of Hufton+Crow
Big thanks to my friend Emily Iremonger at Asif Khan, located in London, for sharing images of the "Beatbox" project ompleted for the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Khan and his team created an tectonic representation of what KRS-One describes as the essence of hip hop, the ability to remix. Although Asif Khan made no attempt to directly connect this project to hip hop culture, and as it focused more on the creation of music in general, it's impossible for me not to see it as a precedent for hip hop inspired architecture both programmatically and aesthetically.
Read MoreUW Madison First Wave Scholar, Gretchen Carvajal, shows off her artistic representation of "Picasso Baby" by Jay Z. Photo by: Bradlee Berrtam and Michael Ford
Check out the images I captured with University of Wisconsin Madison - First Wave scholar Gretchen Carvajal, after I was invited as a guest lecturer to UW-Madison's campus by professor Shawn Peters. While at UW-Madison I introduced the students to fine arts using Jay -Z's "Picasso Baby" lyrics as a catalysis to engage students. Groups of students were challenged to create their own Baby Picasso's based on the lyrical content of Picasso Baby. Can you identify the images from the lyrics?
Read MoreThis commercial aired a few years ago, but with Kevin Durant quickly becoming one of the best scorers and developing an impeccable brand and The Mo Williams Academy becoming a basketball development brand to be reckoned with, I think the commercial needs to be revisited for a those reasons, plus the cross disciplinary effort which went into making it a success. DJ Quick was the composer and producer overall for the commercial and the beats, the NBA players created the lyrics and the commercial was directed by Andreas Nilsson.
Read MoreInnovation continues in the world of hip hop. Pharrell Williams one of the greatest producers of all time has created a first in the music industry, Pharrell has debuted what's being described as the first 24-hour music video.
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My wife and I ventured down memory lane this evening remembering a joyous occasion, our baby announcement video we created one evening. I proposed to my wife on Christmas Day by gluing letters to a Scrabble game board, her favorite game. A few years later, we found out we were expecting our first child. We created and shared this fun video with our family and friends as a baby announcement. We created the video with our cell phone and Adobe Premier in just a few hours.
Unfortunately our son did not make it. His little heart stopped beating on his due date, just before my wife gave birth to him. Our memories of him are still strong and this musical announcement still takes us back to a happy place.
I hope you enjoy.
Image Source: http://www.aceshowbiz.com
Its always been rumored that Dr. Dre studied architecture, I wish I knew if this rumor was true or not. Dr. Dre has taken over the music industry yet again with the design of Beats by Dre, which has redefined the way that music is to be heard. Check out the video below which ties Dr Dre's music career to architecture.
Ilja Karilampi’s video The Chief Architect of Gangsta Rap (2009) makes the conjecture that Andre Young, better known as Dr. Dre (b. 1965), studied architecture before becoming famous as a hip-hop producer and rapper. The Berlin-based artist describes Dre’s rise in the music industry, from his early techno-influenced records, to his role in the controversial group N.W.A., and finally to Dre’s solo albums and major collaborations with fellow rappers.Throughout the video, the artist proposes Dre’s connections to and opinions of the work of Modernist architects like Le Corbusier (1887–1965). Karilampi also incorporates his own biography into the video, speaking about how his life has intersected with Dre’s music. Though Karilampi offers no proof to his assertions, the video presents its own, nearly convincing logic. Although imagining of the types of buildings the music producer would design may seem far reaching, Karilampi’s suggestion that urban planning—in this particular case, it is that of Los Angeles’s Compton neighborhood—significantly helps in shaping the culture of a region contains more fact than fiction.
Mikal Hameed is a Brooklyn-based artist and designer who is constantly finding new corners of America's creative culture to explore. After starting out in music and theater, he shifted his efforts to visual arts and production design, all of which inform his latest efforts as a craftsman and maker.
I recently came across his "Eames Hotrod Boombox"—a refurbished and reimagined Eames lounge chair—at Brooklyn's Dijital Fix and I was fascinated by the notion of "remixing" an iconic design object, especially since it incorporated another vintage reference point in the turntable. Meanwhile, the allusion to the boombox is itself a reference to mixing and sampling music, and it so happens that the "Eames Hotrod Boombox" was featured as the album art for a compilation album called Verve Remixed 4. Although the project dates back to 2008, the video is certainly worth a minute of your time; New York-based readers can see it in person at Dijital Fix in Williamsburg, just a couple short blocks from the Bedford Avenue stop on the L.
In Collaboration with designer Domeau & Peres, Pharrell tries his hand in creating couture furniture for a gallery show in Paris.
I wish I was able to get in contact with Pharrell to show him some of my “BrandNU” custom and couture furniture designs! That would have been an assume meeting!
Blog Source
Hip Hop Mogul - Pharrell designs new furniture
Louis Armstrong Park was developed with the city of New Orleans to
highlight the site’s rich, historic African American heritage and
culture. The interpretive plaza celebrates six key contributors, linking
them through design elements and the creation of an animated public
space. Louis Armstrong Park is a 29.23-acreregional park, housing vital
cultural resources such as the Municipal Auditorium, Mahalia Jackson
Theater for the Performing Arts, the National Jazz Historical Park, and
Congo Square. The park provides an interpretive “journey” through New
Orleans’ history and culture, while creating educational and cultural
opportunities for families. As a team member while working at Hamilton Anderson Associates in Detroit, Michigan, Michael Ford was involved with developing the design concept and architectural graphics.
