Overview

“This book is not for you. It is not for architectural academic elites. It is not for those who have gentrified our neighborhoods, overly intellectualized the profession, and ignored all contemporary Black theory within the discipline. You have made architecture a symbol of exclusion, oppression, and domination rather than expression, aspiration, and inspiration. This book is not for conformists—Black, White, or other.” As architecture grapples with its own racist legacy, Hip-Hop Architecture outlines a powerful new manifesto—the voice of the underrepresented, marginalized, and voiceless within the discipline. Exploring the production of spaces, buildings, and urban environments that embody the creative energies in hip-hop, it is a newly expanding design philosophy which sees architecture as a distinct part of hip-hop's cultural expression, and which uses hip-hop as a lens through which to provoke new architectural ideas. Examining the present and the future of Hip-Hop Architecture, the book also explores its historical antecedents and its theory, placing it in a wider context both within architecture and within Black and African American movements. Throughout, the work is illustrated with inspirational case studies of architectural projects and creative practices, and interspersed with interludes and interviews with key architects, designers, and academics in the field. This is a vital and provocative work that will appeal to architects, designers, students, theorists, and anyone interested in a fresh view of architecture, design, race and culture. Includes Foreword by Michael Eric Dyson.

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9781350116146

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Reviews

Hip-Hop Architecture is a meditation on architecture's intersection with one of the most influential contemporary cultural movements-hip-hop. Cooke's deft textual and visual riffs merge hip-hop's sonic and performative modalities-remix, breakdance, graffiti-with traditions and practices that inform black spatiality and design. * Mabel O. Wilson, Columbia University, USA *

Hip-Hop Architecture is a meditation on architecture's intersection with one of the most influential contemporary cultural movements-hip-hop. Cooke's deft textual and visual riffs merge hip-hop's sonic and performative modalities-remix, breakdance, graffiti-with traditions and practices that inform black spatiality and design. * Mabel O. Wilson, Columbia University, USA * Cooke's Hip-Hop Architecture is presented at exactly the time we need a new way to think about form, space, surface, construction, renovation, cities, activism, and the power of a cultural moment that has reshaped the planet. But don't call this book timely-call it brave, urgent, phresh, and a book that reflects a perspective that the discipline of architecture has needed for a long time. * Ronald Rael, University of California-Berkeley, USA * Hip-Hop Architecture makes the most compelling argument to date for an emerging movement in architecture defined by modalities of practice-deejaying, emceeing, breakdancing, and graffiti writing-rather than by reference to the Western architecture canon. * Michael Speaks, Dean, Syracuse University School of Architecture *

The book hip-hop architecture deserves-and the one our era of reckoning demands. * Metropolis * This compelling book simultaneously challenges an inherent elitism (and whiteness) in contemporary architectural theory and practice, and embraces and expands the scholarly vocabulary of the canon. * Library Journal * Hip-Hop Architecture is a call for building design to be instated as the fifth pillar of this cultural movement, joining dance, drama, fine arts and music... As idiosyncratic, challenging and genre-redefining as Hip-hop's other cultural manifestations, Cooke's book argues for a new approach to urban design that better expresses the Black and African American experience. * Wallpaper* * Cooke's book reminds us how what has been built to date is the result of the application of political, social and cultural ideas and principles that have intentionally excluded certain sections of the population. Architecture is the manifesto of this exclusion and, over time, becomes testimony of the errors of a society that should no longer belong to us. So the author starts from hip-hop to get to the maximum systems, because hip-hop is a culture that binds people, unites them in community, through music, sounds, dances. Its pages describe and reflect the values of a culture linked by sound and words. * Elle Decor Italia * Well-researched, engaging and fresh ... [Cooke] strips the paternalizing aspects off, which often pervade the treatises emanating from the ivory towers of academia. * Scene Point Blank * Hip-Hop Architecture is a meditation on architecture's intersection with one of the most influential contemporary cultural movements-hip-hop. Cooke's deft textual and visual riffs merge hip-hop's sonic and performative modalities-remix, breakdance, graffiti-with traditions and practices that inform black spatiality and design. * Mabel O. Wilson, Columbia University, USA * Cooke's Hip-Hop Architecture is presented at exactly the time we need a new way to think about form, space, surface, construction, renovation, cities, activism, and the power of a cultural moment that has reshaped the planet. But don't call this book timely-call it brave, urgent, phresh, and a book that reflects a perspective that the discipline of architecture has needed for a long time. * Ronald Rael, University of California-Berkeley, USA * Hip-Hop Architecture makes the most compelling argument to date for an emerging movement in architecture defined by modalities of practice-deejaying, emceeing, breakdancing, and graffiti writing-rather than by reference to the Western architecture canon. * Michael Speaks, Dean, Syracuse University School of Architecture *

Author Information

Sekou Cooke is an architect, researcher, educator, and curator based in Syracuse, NY. He is Assistant Professor at Syracuse University's School of Architecture where he teaches exploratory design studios and seminars. He holds a B.Arch from Cornell University, an M.Arch from Harvard University, and is licensed to practice architecture in New York and California. Through his research, practice, and other academic endeavors, Sekou hopes to leave an equally lasting impact on ivory towers and underserved communities.

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