“Hip hop is this post-occupancy evaluation of modernism. It’s critiquing the spaces and places that people are walking, talking, and living every day, and these are unsolicited, unfiltered, and raw critiques,” says Michael Ford, the Madison, Wisconsin-based designer, educator, and lecturer dubbed the Hip Hop Architect. Dedicated to diversifying the industry, in 2016 he founded the Hip Hop Architecture Camp, offering underrepresented youth around the U.S., as well as Canada and Kenya, a free immersion in architecture, urban planning, and economic development by exploring hip hop as design and activism. We caught up with the Detroit native to talk accessibility, empowerment, and youthful innovation.
This year, the Hip Hop Architecture Camp was entirely virtual. What was that shift like?
Normally our camp would service about 40 young people at a time. This virtual program had 880 sign up from all over. The format allows us to increase our impact. We can connect with young people in communities that we don’t have the budget to go to and then we can allow them access to resources. We had a partner who provided laptops to any student who said they didn’t have one. Working with Autodesk, all the software was free.
Was there a highlight?
We always have guest speakers, which is the best part to me. Discussions by [people] of extreme influence, like Chance the Rapper, amplify our voice and our reach. Our guest speakers this year were Angela Yee, a radio personality for The Breakfast Club. Then we had Wilson Smith, a designer at Nike who has done work for Serena Williams, Scottie Pippin, and Michael Jordan, but his background is architecture. We also had the designer of the Beats by Dre headphones. We had a number of architects every day joining the call as volunteers and leading some of the exercises.
How has the Hip Hop Architecture Camp evolved?
It started off as something small that I did while I was working at an architectural practice and teaching at a university. Once Autodesk got involved, we were able to spread out through the city. It went from simply exposing young Black and brown children to architecture to being a tool used by city planning departments and private developers as a community engagement initiative. The camp has also evolved from something only for youth to something that professionals use. We’ve done what I call design cyphers, these three-day jam sessions. Like hey, let’s bring some of the top hip hop lyricists, some of the top young Black architects and designers, and just see what we can create together.
Can you share one example of how you are bridging hip hop and architecture?
We’ve created a new process that allows you to extract the rhythms, textures, and patterns of music. You can look at the rhyme schemes and then convert those into textiles, which can be used for furniture or as the basis for an entire plan for a city. Each pattern is based on a unique rhyme style of different MCs.
What inspired the Hip Hop + Architecture as Design Justice Competition you established?
Lupe Fiasco’s lyrics allow us to imagine a just world and I wanted people to look at other artists and how their lyrical dexterity provides context clues into what a more just world could be. We received a couple hundred submissions, all tied to a rap lyric. People designed everything from these futuristic bracelets that allow you to understand the history of the space that you’re in—especially as it relates to Black communities decimated by expressways—and new police surveillance tools like drones, which create 3D realtime scans of every police stop.
What is one of your goals for the Hip Hop Architecture Camp?
We spent almost 50 years dancing to hip hop but nobody ever said, ‘Wait, did you just hear what they said? They just described a crumbling building or the paint falling from their ceiling.’ Instead, [we should have been] responding to those issues we spent the last 50 years dancing to. So that’s one thing that I’m trying to switch with our young folks.
This article originally appeared in HD’s November 2020 issue.
