Photo via Michael Ford Twitter
Hip Hop Architecture is challenging everyone—architects, students, designers, artists, singers, rappers, and hip hop fans—to use hip hop’s protest music as prompts for imagining a ‘Just City.’
The current pandemic has challenged everyone to reimagine how spaces will be used in a post-COVID-19 society. How will movie theaters, hospitals, universities, and concert halls operate? Will live sports allow fans in the stands again? Will employees work from home on a permanent basis, and, if so, what changes need to be made in people’s homes?
“These are all valid questions and explorations, and coupled with the consistent injustices faced by African Americans, we challenge everyone to think about a new question. How will spaces look in a Just City? A city which has defeated and dismantled racism? What tools will help us get there?” asks Hip Hop Architecture.
Michael Ford, creator and founder of Hip Hop Architecture calls hip hop, the post occupancy evaluation of modernism. Meaning, hip hop, especially its music is a critique of the environment. However, not only does the music critique the built environment, with a careful ear one can hear lyrical references of future spaces, places, and objects that empower and enable black communities to overcome the current injustices faced in the built environment, including education disparities, environmental injustices, and police brutality.
This open call for submissions anticipates entries in various media including, but not limited to drawings, songs, models, mobile app concepts, poems, fashion concepts, technological advances, and products all aimed at displaying a Just City. All proposals are welcome, from the most utopian to realistic.
This competition is not limited to architecture. It welcomes people from other arts and design industries. Submissions must be inspired by a hip hop lyric, track, or album title focused on imagining better communities.
Submissions can be anything from music, architectural or fashion concepts, sketches, renderings, graphic design project, infographics, comic strips, animations, or memes.
The submission deadline is June 20. Click here for more information.
