Ep. 141: Hip Hop Architect Michael Ford
Michael Ford is the designer and activist known as The Hip Hop Architect. Born in Highland Park, Michigan the son of a minister, Michael was raised to be inquisitive and question the world around him to find deeper truth. Early on, he found his passion for design and music, expanding it into a practice of architecture and design through the lens of Hip Hop culture. This led to his founding of The Hip Hop Architecture Camp®, a camp that positions Hip Hop Culture as a catalyst to introduce architecture and design to underrepresented youth. He’s also working with some of Hip Hop's greatest names as he leads the design of The Universal Hip Hop Museum in The Bronx.
Learn more about Michael Ford at The Hip Hop Architecture Camp.
Read the full transcript here.
Michael Ford: I spent my career going back to that thesis and answering some of those questions. How can you analyze music mathematically, how can you visualize music, how can you touch and feel music. So these were things i was exploring, looking at different mediums to create that tactile experience.
Amy Devers: Hi everyone, I’m Amy Devers and this is Clever. Today i’m talking to Michael Ford. Michael Ford is a designer, activist, and better known as the Hip Hop Architect as he explores architecture through hip hop culture. He is the founder of the Hip Hop Architecture Camp, an international award-winning youth camp that which positions hip hop culture as a catalyst to help underrepresented youth understand, critique, and generate architecture. Also, currently, he’s working with some of Hip Hop’s greatest names as he leads the design of the Hip Hop Museum in the Bronx. He’s been featured in the Rolling Stone magazine, Oprah Winfrey network, the Today show, Architect magazine. And as a speaker, he’s done keynotes at SXSW, American Institute of Architects and a TEDX talk titled Hip Hop Architecture as Modernism’s Post-Occupancy Evaluation. He’s fresh off a collaboration with Herman Miller called Conversations for Change in which he remixed and iconic Eames lounge chair and hosted conversations on Instagram Live about racial injustice to raise awareness for the greater movement and funds for youth who’ve been affected by police brutality. You can see thee chair and hear the talks on the Herman Miller IGTV channel. Here’s Michael Ford.
MF: My name is Michael Ford, I am based in Madison, Wisconsin and I’m known as the ‘Hip-Hop Architect.’ I’m a designer, I’m an educator. My goal is to make cities better for the people who live in them, but also provide the people who live in them an opportunity to envision what it is that they want in their cities.
AD: I love that. In order to trace the steps to where you got to now, I always like to go all the way back to the beginning. I read that you were born and raised in Detroit, is that true?
MF: Yeah, well, to be more specific, in a city called Highland Park, which is in the center of the city of Detroit, so bound on all sides by Detroit. Detroit steals our thunder because it’s the actual place where Henry Ford started the assembly line; it’s in Highland Park, not Detroit. But born and raised in Highland Park, but also raised in the city of Detroit as well.
AD: I feel some kinship, I was born and raised in Ypsilanti, which is only about a half hour away and sometimes gets the nickname, ‘Little D.’ Detroit looms large in Michigan and permeates the culture there. But can you talk to me about your childhood and maybe your family dynamic and what kid you were? How did your creativity and curiosity and intellect start to express itself?
MF: I grew up, both parents at home, my dad is a minister and a roofer and my mother works in healthcare. I would think that I was an inquisitive kid. I grew up being told to question everything, partly because of my church life. I grew up in a home where you were at church multiple days a week, it was Wednesday, it was Saturday, it was Sunday, Friday nights. But we were a non-denominational church, so we were not Christians, but we read the Bible and were told to question and find deeper truths within everything that we read, not only in the Bible, but that was also talked about with our lives as well and the things around us.
That’s how I grew up, if you’re told something, go back, research it until you can agree with it or answer every question you might have about it. An interesting thing about my church, we owned a lot of property throughout the city of Detroit and Highland Park and I grew up above one of our community centers. So it’s a mixed use building, the ground floor was our restaurant and our community center and at the top were a few apartments. That’s where I was born and raised up to first grade or something. But I have some vivid memories of that apartment because every Friday night we had a kiddie disco at our church community center.
AD: That’s awesome!
MF: But also on Saturdays the adults had their own parties and events. But there was this back stairwell from our apartment where you could sit right next to the DJ room and see the dance floor. It was a dark stairwell; if you looked at the stairwell you couldn’t see anything back there. But me, my sisters, if I had a cousin or a friend who spent the night, that was where we spent our Friday nights and Saturday nights, looking at the dance floor, listening to the music, peaking into the DJ booth, that was our secret spot. That’s where my love of music started.
During those events you’ll hear everything from gospel to jazz or blues and you definitely heard hip-hop. This for me is the early 80s and hip-hop is really starting to travel around the country and is played everywhere at the time. So that was my early years of life and the way that I got introduced to architecture, I went to a program at a school called the Center for Creative Studies and this was in elementary school. I went there because I wanted to design cars.
I was a person who drew a lot, so I’m drawing comic book characters, cartoon characters for people and their folders at school, made a dollar to hook up all their folders and their books, or you’d draw cars, these futuristic cars. My teacher told me, you should go to the Center for Creative Studies and have a career in designing cars. And long story short, I went there and I found out that there’s going to be a new car that comes out every year; the same person doesn’t necessarily design that new car. And you don’t necessarily design an entire car. You might design parts.
And at that moment I said, well, if I design a car this year, someone designs one next year, people might not ever drive my car [laughs].
AD: That critical thinking is already in play.
MF: Yeah, that was my thinking as a young kid in elementary school. And the teacher told me, you should think about architecture. You design a building, that building might last longer than you and people can always experience what’s inside of that building. And at that moment I made a switch and said, you know what? I think I’m going to study architecture.
AD: And this was from elementary school. I think this is so fascinating because you’ve already painted a really vivid picture of huddling in this dark stairwell with your access point to the music that was happening on Friday and Saturday nights. That’s an architectural nook that is incubating, as you say, architecture incubates culture and I mean that happened for you at a young age and I love that you figured out that automobile design wasn’t necessarily going to have the longevity or legacy that you were looking for, so maybe architecture is more important.
MF: Yeah, it was a great suggestion. I wish I remembered this teachers name, I always say I need to go back and find her, but yeah, it was a great suggestion. And when I told my dad about, hey, I think I’m going to do architecture instead of automobile and then he pulled out his portfolio because he went to school to become an interior designer.
AD: No way!
MF: Before having five of us, that was one of his dreams. And I’m 4th or 5th grade at this point, I’m young, and he pulls out his portfolio and it’s these large sketches of different spaces. It’s like yeah, this is what your dad wanted to become, so I tried to draw some of these pictures and that’s when he started telling me about drawing perspectives, started to draw things around the house, on the block. He even took me into his career later on of being a roofer and let me see drawings, see these from up above.
AD: Wow, and did you have no idea that your dad had this interior design background?
MF: None whatsoever, this was in the basement [laughter], went to school for interior design, he went to school to become an HVAC engineer and eventually again, with a ton of mouths to feed and a wife, he became a commercial roofer, which was still a great career. Yeah, I didn’t know about these drawings, they were tucked away in the basement and they were incredible.
AD: Yeah, what a discovery and what a bonding moment with your dad it sounds like and I’m guessing then you got no resistance to the idea of becoming an architect?
MF: Yeah.
AD: Some parents are really concerned about pushing their child into a creative profession because they worry about economic viability, but it sounds like you had encouragement coming from a few different places.
MF: Yeah, most definitely. He was all for it, he was excited, as well as my family and again, we spent most of our time at church and as I mentioned before, my church owns a significant amount of property around the city of Detroit, our members live in houses that were owned by the church, had restaurants, activity centers, arcades, places that my pastor, the membership said that these are going to be safe places for us to live out our youth, but then also the young adults who were there don’t have to go out into a night club.
So we’re in the city, we can create our own safe space with our own type of music in a time where there definitely were some challenges around the city, as far as safety. Our church created its own safe haven and a lot of people were in the building trades and were renovating and literally building the places and spaces that the church owned. So now with someone interested in architecture, so no resistance whatever, it’s like yes, come on.
AD: So did this passion continue into your teenage years and are there any experiences, triumphs or challenges that you look back on as milestones in your development?
MF: Yeah, so as a teenager, the high school I went to was extremely important in helping me reach the next stage. I went to Cass Tech High School in Detroit, so shout out Cass Tech! It’s a high school with a storied history in the city. So a number of entertainers and change makers from the city graduated from the school, so people like Diana Ross, the rapper, Big Sean and a lot of people in between goes to… The first black Miss America, the list goes on. But one of the things that was special about Cass Tech is you had an opportunity to pick a major when you went to the high school.
So public school, you had to take a test to get in and school is in downtown Detroit, so it wasn’t a neighborhood high school, so they had a little bit more flexibility. My major was architecture. And while there I met this amazing teacher, her name is Carol Baker, I’ll never forget her. She was the architecture teacher at Cass Tech. And what made her special was, this was the first time I had a class in high school that lasted for two consecutive class periods. So even as a young person, our architecture classes were long. But she made that class extremely exciting, the types of projects that we worked on, encouraging us to think about our city and she also took me to the University of Detroit. She took us to critiques and presentations.
AD: Wow!
MF: And it was one that she took me to at the University of Detroit that pretty much cemented the fact that I was going to go to UDM and study architecture. Yeah, it was there I met Dan Patera who is now the Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Detroit. I remember I was an 11th grader and we met Dan Patera at a critique, it was like a four hour critique, we were dreading going there. [Laughs] Not only was it four hours, but it also was after school -
AD: Oh man!
MF: We were there, but Dan is this massive personality, he’s a lil fellow, he was the director of the Detroit Collaborative Design Center at the time and had a very opening and welcoming personality. After seeing us at the school, he’d tell each one of us that we have a place in architecture and the University of Detroit Mercy was there to help carve or create their niche and own our place. And he was telling us this, but he said it with conviction and passion. We’d believe in him like yes, I believe you; I’m coming, help me, let’s do this together. Yeah, so in 11th grade I knew I was going to the University of Detroit.
AD: That’s a powerful story. I’m also curious about, you had this really important teacher, Carol Baker, Dan Patera with his acceptance and big personality, also lended some enthusiasm and excitement and opened some pathways. But from a young age it seems to me like you’ve been training your eye and your mind to look at the city for ways that it could be redesigned or how it works and why it works that way because you’ve seen all of these renovation projects for your church, your dad’s a roofer and an interior designer. You’re in the stairwell listening to hip-hop and you’ve been studying architecture since you were a young kid. So did you see the city in a really granular kind of, this is how it works, x-ray vision kind of way?
MF: I wouldn’t say I’d seen the city, like how it works. Growing up and going to school in Detroit and going to school in Highland Park my younger years, when I got older and I looked back at the neighborhood I grew up in and the paths we took walking to school or catching the bus to school, this desolation was kind of normalized. You didn’t realize how desolate or the lack of investment that there was in your community.
I didn’t realize some of the issues, because the vacant lot was the lot where we played football. The park, it didn’t matter that it wasn’t a playscape, as long as the basketball ring was up, you could play basketball. It was not apparent to me growing up, but one of the things that was very clear to me, and again, always expressed, was to question information when it’s given to you or presented to you. So like with music, we listened to, not just hip-hop music, but a lot of gospel and blues, jazz, I played the trumpet.
My dad had a jazz band when I was growing up; I played the trumpet in the band. And we had to write our own music because we couldn’t go out and buy sheet music, so oftentimes we listened to music in the dining room. My dad played the guitar, his brother played the bass, I played the trumpet, so did my friend across the street, who was a few years old and one of the leaders in our school band. But we literally wrote our own music from listening to songs.
So we would have these jam sessions where we would modify what it is that we listen to and what we’ve written and that is where I think the idea of analyzing what’s around you really came from. It was less from drawing and architecture; it was really my background in music. And the last thing about that experience of music is that you always had to slow music down. I would hear certain notes or certain phrases in a song until, you know, I didn’t want to hear that song ever again in life because we were trying to find the exact note that was happening.
You’ve got a tape player, you’re going back and forth, back and forth and that is something that I’ve put forward today with hip-hop architecture, the hip-hop architecture camp. It’s a deep analysis and questioning of what it is that we’re hearing and finding ways to analyze it now from an architectural perspective, not with the goal of regurgitating or just playing it back, but really understanding what’s there embedded within the music that most people don’t have the ability to hear.
AD: That’s fascinating. Thank you for breaking that down and painting that picture and it makes sense, from the research that I’ve done about you, that that analysis of music and it’s parts and then a re-interpretation and a questioning of its meaning and its poetry would be formative for you. So, you went to UDM and wrote a pretty important document. Your thesis was, set the stage for the rest of your work, I guess [laughs]. Why don’t you tell me about your college years and what that was like for you?
MF: It was the best time of my life. While at UDM I did study abroad, so I went to Warsaw for about six months and then me and my best friend, Ross, who went to high school with me, he did that study abroad, so then him and I traveled around Europe for a month after that.
AD: Wow!
MF: And it was at that time that we realized how big hip-hop is. So this is like 2002/2003, 2003, we’re travelling around Europe and we had this experience that we still talk about to this day. We were in Prague and we go to this nightclub. So we go to this nightclub and you know, a lot of places played hip-hop music that we can go hang out at after studying during the day. And this club in Prague plays a 50 Cent song and my friend and I were sitting there and some people come up to us and they’re like almost trying to show us that they could rap this 50 Cent song.
These are complete strangers and we were like, yeah, okay, 50 Cent, we’re rapping with them. And the song goes off and we start to talk and they did not speak English. That was mind blowing.
AD: Whoa!
MF: So they’re rapping a 50 Cent song, word for word, they’re here at the table, all the hand gestures, we’re like, okay, yes, we’re excited, we want to have a conversation about hip-hop and it was like maybe three or four young people, they were traveling from another country as well. And yeah, they didn’t speak English. And it was, the best way I can describe it is mind blowing.-
AD: And also just such a testament to how transcendent hip-hop is, it transcended all the language barriers.
MF: Yeah, so now at this moment, we come back, you know, a lot of other things happened while we were traveling around hip-hop, letting us understand how global the culture really is. Break dancing is something that is one of the elements of hip-hop that is definitely different. You look at other countries; they still practice some of the traditional parts of breaking. So I mean we’re seeing people perform on the streets, it opened our eyes up to how global hip-hop culture is. So now we’re back, we’re at UDM, it’s our later years, we’re 3rd or 4th year students and we start to incorporate music into our architecture projects.
We’ve gone from the shadow studies and the abstract architectural projects that you might explore in your earlier years and now we’re doing animations and walk throughs of actual projects. And we would always slip a song or lyrics into our animations that spoke to architecture or design or whatever it was that we were working on at that moment. For us it was the biggest thing ever, to find that perfect song. So we had massive amounts of CDs. My best friend is a DJ, he DJ’d his entire college career, so DJ’d at all the school parties, he DJ’d at night clubs on Friday and Saturday nights.
He was like the music savant. So whenever we’d work on a project, he would make suggestions, hey, let’s use this song where he said this or where she said that. Like all right, we’ll clip it and we’ll put it in our animation and then we’ll invite our friends who are non-architectural students to come to our critiques. And I mean we would all smile and smirk, give a nod, that wink when we heard that rap song that said, whatever it was we were talking about.
Our friends were like, oh, that was so sweet, you know, how did you link that music with the architecture? And that was happening just as something we would do for fun. Sometimes it was curse words in there, right there we’d just throw in some note where our professors hear it, because they’d just hear a beep, they don’t really hear the words. They don’t even know what’s being said. So that was our fun times that we had with our design projects. And fast forward to graduate school, I went to UDM for graduate school as well.
The summer before grad school started we started studying our thesis, so doing a number of investigations, writing our thesis statement. And I started off studying vertical cities, so looking at skyscrapers that are now becoming cities. And I got bored, to be honest, within a month of studying that during the summer. There’s no way I’m going to spend an entire year studying this topic.
But I pressed on because I’d already written so much, my professor was loving it and the first week of school, this is where the hip-hop architecture thesis came in. So that same friend, his name is Eric Christian, he still works with me today for the Hip-Hop Architecture Camp. I’m talking with him, we’re about to give our presentations to all the undergraduate students about what our thesis is and invite them to come look around our studio throughout the year to see what we’re doing.
And our professors are there and I stood up, well, before I stood up I’m talking to Eric, like I don’t want to do this, this is my last moment, I want to do some more fun. He’s like; they say it’s going to be like mixing Hip Hop and Architecture, because we’d been doing this for the last two years in our studio.
AD: Yeah.
MF: I’m like, what? He’s like, I dare you! [Laughter] So, you’ve got to take the dare!
AD: Yeah! [Laughter]
MF: It wasn’t just taking the dare, we’re like, you know what? It makes sense. So when I stood up, I was like, yeah, my thesis is going to be a cultural innovation; it’s like hip-hop inspired architecture and design. And my professor looks like, what? That’s not what we’ve been discussing. I said it and UDM became a place that helped me explore this idea, even though it was something that no one knew what the thesis would be, including myself.
AD: Right.
MF: But they were able to bring in other resources, Dr Craig Wilkins, a professor at the University of Michigan. So I was able to get introduced to some of his work while I was a graduate student, him and Dan Patera were pretty close and Dan was adamant about me connecting with Craig or at least some of the work that Craig was doing, that studied music and architecture. And at the end of that graduate year, the thesis was an exploration of everything within hip-hop culture, not just music, but looking at break dancing, DJ’ing, graffiti and then even got down to the language, the word ‘creation’ and how the culture is disseminated around the world. Trying to see how architecture can learn from hip-hop.
AD: And this is that deep analysis that you’ve gotten so good at.
MF: Yeah, it was, I’ll say when the thesis was over I still didn’t know, like what happens when you combine hip-hop and architecture. I think that the thesis and the professors at the University of Detroit were good at asking questions and I think the thesis ended with, in my opinion, a series of questions more than an answer. But I spent my career going back to that thesis and answering some of those questions. So some of the things I explored as a student was how can you analyze music mathematically. How can you visualize music?
How can you touch and feel music? So the music already gives you a certain feeling, right, and emotional response, it provokes these emotions. But how can you feel music? How can you touch music? And then what’s the difference from holding a hip-hop song versus a country song or a blues song? So these were things I was exploring and looking at different mediums to create the tactile experience. And eventually it became a curriculum for what I’m doing today with the Hip-Hop Architecture Camp.
AD: Okay, so I can’t wait to talk about Hip-Hop Architecture Camp, but I need to know a little bit about, between the thesis that you just explained and before you founded Hip-Hop Architecture Camp. How do you write a thesis like that and investigate all of these interesting and important questions and not have answers, but still have a really strong foundation for investigation and question asking? And then how do you translate that into your professional self, after you graduate and it’s time to go get a job? What do you do?
MF: Yeah, so one of the gems in Detroit is an architect named Rainy Hamilton, an African American architect who has been in Detroit through thick and thin. He has been there; almost every black architect or designer who has grown up in the city has worked for or with Rainy in some way. So when I was graduating from UDM, I met Rainy Hamilton and that was my first job at Hamilton Anderson Associates. And while at Hamilton Anderson, I got to work on a variety of projects and two of the projects that were interesting as far as pairing black music and architecture were Louis Armstrong Park in New Orleans.
So after Hurricane Katrina, Hamilton Anderson opened an office in New Orleans and the Louis Armstrong Park was one of the projects that we worked on, restoring that park. The Louis Armstrong Park is dedicated to New Orleans natives and their contribution to jazz.
AD: Oh, this sounds perfect for you.
MF: Right?
AD: Yeah.
MF: It’s Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson and a number of other folks from New Orleans. It was this park that told their history. So that was an exciting project. It was more of a landscape architecture project than New Orleans architecture, but everyone knew my interest in blending music and architecture, it was a project that I had some heavy involvement with during the design phases. And then another project was Motown Museum. The Motown Museum expansion, which is now a project that everybody should definitely check out, Hamilton Anderson and Perkins + Will are on that project in Detroit.
But long before what it is today, Hamilton Anderson did some studies for Berry Gordy and Motown, about what an expansion of that museum can be. And this was a project that Rainy Hamilton was hands-on with and then myself and another architect in Detroit, Russell Baltimore. It was the three of us working together, probably sure there were some other people here and there but those studies for Motown Museum’s expansion was definitely an exciting project for me. Because now I’m talking about jazz with the Louis Armstrong Park, I’m looking at Motown, my thesis is about hip-hop. So now I’m just looking for a church project and I can round out some of the black music experience. [Laughs]. And the Motown Museum project now, it’s back and I wish I was still in Detroit working on this project, now it’s been funded and it’s a real project. And then fast forward to today, I left Hamilton Anderson and I moved to Madison, Wisconsin. So Detroit had its economic challenges and being a young designer in a city that’s limited as far as the building that’s happening -
I needed to get somewhere where I could continue to work on projects, sizeable projects and learn as much as I could. So I moved to Madison to work at a firm called Flad. The reason why I chose Flad is the project types are completely different. It’s mostly science and technology, higher ed, but they had a model that struck home. Their model was they only work on projects which improve the quality of life.
AD: Oh, that should be everybody’s model!
MF: And they stick to it. So coming to Flad, I worked on research facilities and really had an opportunity to get an inside look at how various researchers, whether it was medical fields, I worked on the Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene, I got to learn a lot about researchers and their detailed processes. That definitely was something I poured into my studies with hip-hop architecture, where I was looking at deeper ways to analyze the culture.
And after, while working at Hamilton Anderson and working at Flad, I always worked as an educator as well. So I went back to my alma mater while at Hamilton Anderson and I taught design courses, taught 3D modeling courses at night. The same thing at Flad, worked during the day, but then taught at a local college, again, design courses and technology courses there. So always had this dual role, this working within the profession but then also creating the next generation of architects and designers.
AD: Yeah, so I was going to ask you, is that your pull towards being an educator, is influencing the next generation?
MF: Yes, influencing the next generation and more importantly, I want to reach back and provide avenues for them to bring their culture into the space and not check it at the door.
AD: Yeah, I see that, that’s important.
MF: Very important. That’s the big thing with teaching and letting people know that your culture, specifically hip-hop culture, is something that everyone wants to copy and emulate while also telling you not to do it. Don’t dress like that, don’t walk like that, don’t talk like that, but, you told me not to wear my baggy clothes, but Levi made a whole line of loose fit and baggy jeans. [Laughs] So why shouldn’t I wear my clothes like the fashion industry is copying what we’re doing?
And missing the creativity and what it is that we’re doing. It’s like, hey, I have these hand-me-downs from my big cousin or my big brother, but I’m going to make these hand-me-downs look so fly that you’re not gonna want to rock your new clothes. [Laughs] You need to go find some big, baggy shirts, just like I got on! Now, I don’t feel out of place because I’ve got my brothers clothes on, you feel out of place because you have those new jeans on.
It was like this creativity, this mindset that culture has and I want people coming to architecture to have that same mindset and not check it at the door. You have something that they need or want, but it’s how do you bring it into that space. And that’s a lot of the conversations I have while teaching and eventually while teaching here in Madison, I was working on, getting people civically engaged, so the Hip-Hop Architecture Camp, and the way it got started was, took some students to a city planning meeting and it was about the city strategic plans.
So looking 40 years into the future of the City of Madison, what things should they focus on, over these next 40 years? And we had the clickers in our hand, you can answer the multiple choice questions with these clickers and it was some demographic questions and it was like, after everybody clicked the answer, the average age in that room was late 40s or early 50s, it was mostly white males. Like you’re seeing it, it’s huge, right there on the screen.
And it was two black people in the room; it was myself and an older man and then getting that average age was pretty high. If we’re talking about what the city of Madison will be doing over the next 40 years, I posed a simple question to the planning department and the mayor’s office, why don’t we get younger people involved in this process who will inherit these decisions when they are in their prime versus letting [0.45.00] 50 year olds make these decisions, who will be 90 when everything is implemented.
So we had multiple conversations there, like yes, we agree, we’ve been trying to do it, we invite everyone, but no one is coming, like what’s your solution to get people to come up? I said let’s mix music with this planning process and I’m going to make a Hip-Hop Architecture Camp.
AD: I love it! I love it!
MF: And they were like too far in to say no.
AD: Yeah! [Laughs]
MF: All right, let’s do it, let’s see what happens and that was the first Hip-Hop Architecture Camp. It was a partnership with the City of Madison to get young people engaged with the city’s comprehensive plan.
AD: So, can you describe what the Hip-Hop Architecture Camp is and what the experience is like and what happens in the course of a camp?
MF: So the Hip-Hop Architecture Camp uses hip-hop culture to critique, analyze and generate architecture and the ultimate goal of the Hip-Hop Architecture Camp is to increase diversity and design fields such as architecture in urban planning.
AD: How old are the kids?
MF: These are middle school and high school students.
AD: Okay.
MF: So during a camp, traditionally it’s a weeklong program and during the camp we use lyrics as a way to explore the city that we’re in. We deconstruct lyrics. So instead of listening to music, a lot of times we print off lyrics or we have students print off some of their favorite lyrics. Then we identify the critiques that are embedded within that music.
AD: Can you share an example?
MF: I’ll share one of the more storied examples, Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, it’s a song called The Message, which is one of the most popular hip-hop songs of all time. They are talking about all of the challenges within their neighborhood. The opening lyrics is like, ‘Broken glass everywhere, people pissing on the stairs, 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.’ So they’re talking about the conditions of the physical space. They’re talking about the psychological impact that the physical space has on the inhabitants.
And then they’re also talking about the structural or systemic racism that is embedded within that architecture which prevents people from moving out or moving into other areas. So that song is very complex and rich for the individuals who have the ability to break it down, to hear what’s being said. But most people when they dance to the music, but I encourage people, don’t just dance, let’s respond to the music. So that’s an example, but during the camp we will break down lyrics.
I’ve created a process that allows young people to mathematically deconstruct the dexterity of their favorite MC and then reconstruct it as architecture. So you can compare, for young kids, Cardi B and Nicki Minaj, they can compare who is the most complex as far as their lyricism by looking at the structures that result from their verses. And it’s not a sonic experience, right? They can literally see and hold a verse from the two of them and see who is the most complex.
AD: And how are the kids responding to this? I’m sure it’s like a whole new way for them to look at and experience the music?
MF: The kids’ response is great. It always starts off with, what are we doing?
AD: Yeah [laughs].
MF: And we show them the final results, like what? That’s not a song by 2 Chainz, that’s something you made up, that’s some buildings, it’s like no, it’s a 2 Chainz song. And after they go through the process of breaking down and rebuilding a song, and then we have architects, urban planners or engineers who come in and serve as volunteers during the camp, and the volunteers are saying, look at the density in this area and the kids are like, the density? No, that’s just where he had a lot of rhymes, right there. Because where the rhymes occur you have these vertical structures starting to come out of this landscape.
And it’s interesting to see the language that’s on display during a camp where architectures and other design professionals can now start to talk about repetition and scale and density etc. But the kids are like, no, [laughs] all that you’re saying, like this is just how complex the rhyme was, this line packs rhymes here. So it allows for this architectural language, all of the jargon that we speak to be broken down and there’s this interesting transfer and share of knowledge from both sides. And the last thing we do is, now that we’ve broken down music, we also have our young people create music at the camp. So they’ve created a building or a city, but now they have to make a rap about it.
So it’s not your traditional architectural presentation at the end of our camps. Our camps end with a cipher and kids did a rhyme about whatever it is that they designed.
AD: Oh my goodness, this is amazing!
MF: And then we invite different celebrities, hip-hop artists, athletes etc. to our camp. So we’ve had like Damian Lillard from the Portland Trail Blazers, he released a rap album and that same year he came to our Hip-Hop Architecture Camp in Portland. We’ve had Lupe Fiasco, a number of artists and athletes that have come to our camps and tell young people or show young people how to write a verse, how to make that verse complex. So word play and not only word play, but looking at these double entendres and how you can talk about architecture, but not talk about architecture.
It’s very exciting and fun. But after that cipher we picked the best verses, take them to a studio and we make a song. So kids go to a studio during the evening and they record the song from the verses that they made earlier in the day and then the last, the very last day of the camp we go around that city shooting our music video. The kids are excited throughout the camp. The program is 100% free, because of our sponsors and our partners. So we don’t use a fee, even if it’s nominal, like people say, wouldn’t you charge $100 or $50? We charge absolutely nothing.
And we depend on creating and engaging curriculum more than, my momma gave you $100 and I got to come every day. And when I say $100, that’s being nice because there are architecture camps that are $2,000 or $3,000 for young people to be involved in.
AD: Which is an accessibility issue, that’s a problem, that expensive price tag on a youth program, automatically eliminates some people from being able to access it. The free price tag on Hip-Hop Architecture Camp is, it sounds like it’s very important and aligned with your values.
MF: Yeah, it’s extremely important. If we want to diversify our profession, you have to make it accessible. Once we make it accessible, it’s not just about diversity. For me the Hip-Hop Architecture Camp is providing an approach to architecture, a unique vernacular that will set the students apart from their peers when they are in high school, or in architecture schools, like this will be a unique approach that sets them apart from their peers. Many people throughout history have used Black culture to elevate their careers, whether it’s been Picasso, and I’m talking about a lot who chased black music and wanted to implement it into his design. And Elvis Presley, right?
AD: Yeah.
MF: A lot of people have used black culture to elevate their careers. But how can the originators use their own culture to propel themselves as opposed to having the culture vultures be the only ones who will benefit financially from the innovation that’s within our culture.
AD: Amen! I love Hip-Hop Architecture Camp and I can, I love the mission and your ethos and the way that you’re implementing it. And I also imagine it’s incredibly rewarding for you. I hope you get some joy from the whole process because it just sounds like such a joyful experience.
MF: Yeah, it is, one more quick thing is that like the Hip-Hop Architecture Camp, one of the things that is a misconception, is that it’s only for young people. Throughout the years, this is our fifth year, still young folk around but we’ve evolved, we’ve been a part of various projects as a tool for community engagement, community involvement, with adults. We’ve also conducted design ciphers where we bring in hip-hop artists and architects and designers and technology, AI specialists and lock in everyone for three days and see what comes out. So we partner with all of that to conduct these design ciphers. But then the other thing is, we also do service projects. So my high school Cass Tech, made a Mike Ford Day, which is extremely shocking -
AD: Wow!
MF: Just knowing the history of who graduated from the school and who has special days at the school. So that was a shocker, but we give a scholarship to a high school student who is graduating and wants to study architecture or one of the other related design fields. And then also team with Fiasco on a project that we called Hip-Hop for Humanity, something that I’m doing anyway now, but we went to Kenya, or outside of Nairobi I should say.
But a foundation called the Samburu Girls Foundation, so we work with the leader of the Samburu Girls Foundation, she grew up as part of the Samburu tribe and rescues young girls from some historical practices there with female genital mutilation, early marriage, etc. She grew up in a tribe and said, hey, this is wrong, worked with people throughout the country to have it outlawed and made illegal, but it’s hard to enforce in some of the places outside of the city. So she started the Samburu Girls Foundation and was gifted a ton of land but not the financial resources to build out the space.
She’s built buildings here and there throughout the years, but none of them have plumbing, so it’s like 400 girls on their campus, with no running water. So they go, they make a trip, which is a one hour round trip to get water and they fetch water throughout the day, all day, every day, there’s girls taking that trip to get water. And we went there with the University of Wisconsin, some students from here in Madison; Lupe Fiasco was on the board of a group called Zero Mass Water, one of their investors.
But he connected the dots with all of us and we were able to go to the Samburu Girls Foundation and give them water through a technology that Zero Mass Water created, with these water panels, where it extracts water vapor from the air, condenses it and turns it into drinking water.
MF: We jokingly call it Vibranium. It’s this futuristic technology and Lupe has a song that I use to define this project, which is Hip-Hop Saved My Life. And so that was a moment for me, my wife went with me as well, but it was an exciting moment and full circle for the Hip-Hop Architecture Camp being able to provide resource, not just allow people to envision what makes their communities better or safer, but what’s actually creating a vision and then solving that issue, which was access to water. So move beyond, again, visualizing or conceptualizing and actually solving the issue. It was full circle because my wife grew up in Detroit, in a house that did not have running water. If you could just imagine what life was like with eight brothers and sisters. But being in the middle of a major city without running water, was definitely a difficult life as a young lady. So to go there and see all these smiling young girls now, knowing that they don’t have to endure, some of these my wife, it was pretty dope.
AD: That’s amazing and that’s such a powerful story and an amazing impact and you know, now all of those girls who don’t have to commit hours and hours of their day to the labor of bringing water can commit those hours to their own education, their own empowerment, their own quality of life. So many things and wow.
AD: So there’s a project you’re involved in now that I’d love to hear all about. It’s called Conversations for Change and I’ll just sort of paraphrase it and you tell me if I get it right. But it’s a fundraising campaign you’re doing with Herman Miller, wherein you remixed one of the iconic Eames lounge chairs and that lounge chair is now traveling around the country, you are hosting conversations with people sitting in the lounge chair on Instagram Live around important topics, racial justice, things like that, as a sort of current commentary on the historic tagline of that chair, which is a special refuge for the strains of modern living. So,I wonder if you can tell me, first of all describe the remixed lounge chair, tell me how this project came together and how it’s going and what some of these conversations have been like in terms of just being able to discuss things that need to be talked about openly. I’ll let you take it from here, but I’m really curious about this endeavour.
MF: Yeah, so the Conversations for Change started after the death of George Floyd. I was commissioned by the City of Madison to make a mural on one of our major thoroughfares and the mural was on the Museum of Contemporary Art here in Madison, just like every other city. A lot of the businesses were boarding up during the uprisings and calls for justice.
But then you also had Covid as well, right? So a lot of businesses were closed, so it was the city’s mission to allow a safe space and a highly visible space for Black artists to express the tensions that are going on. I’m good friends with some folks here on the Arts Commission and an artist was not showing up, so the director of the Commission calls me, like, “Hey, can you do a mural?” Sure. How much time do I have? It’s tonight… Oh gosh! [Laughter] So yeah, so I make this mural and what we did was, we wanted to express time in a new dimension. So wanted to look at the eight minutes and 46 seconds that Officer Chauvin had his knee on George Floyd’s neck.
And our team, with a friend of mine, who is also an architect and designer here in Madison, and what we did was we painted one tick mark for each second. So it ends up being a piece that we call, 526 Missed Opportunities. And it’s 526 missed opportunities for another officer to stop the unnecessary murder of George Floyd. But we wanted people to see eight minutes and 46 seconds. So it was this time lapse video, more of a performance piece.
And it became a conversation piece, so people who are doing photo shoots, some local hip-hop artists and rappers; they did music videos and incorporated the piece. But unfortunately someone did not agree with the message, they had an alternative message and went and put a strike through each one of the seconds.
It was caught on video by some teens, they put it on Facebook, it started to rack up all these views, eventually they find me and tag me in it and the city tried to fix it. They did a good job, but then she came back and destroyed it beyond repair. So I did a news interview and that’s where Herman Miller seen me at, I did an interview about fixing a mural. And Herman Miller reached out, some of their reps here in Madison said, “Hey, we learned about the Hip-Hop Architecture Camp, we loved the mural, we want to see more and how you’re restoring it, how can we help, how can we be a part?
So yeah, I knew about Charles and Ray Eames from architectural history and theory courses and knew about that piece, that Eames lounge chair and the ottoman. So I’m like, let’s do a mural on the Eames chair and let’s get your customers, let’s get Herman Miller faithfuls to contribute to creating safe space for black and brown youth. So brought up that quote about the Eames lounge chair and ottoman being a refuge from the strains of modern day living. And what I did with the piece was I wrote the names of victims of racial violence throughout America’s history, Black victims, and said that these were people who were not afforded that place of refuge.
And we created this series of conversations around it and I teamed with the Boys & Girls Club here in Madison, it’s called the Boys & Girls Club of Dane County. Teamed with them because of the work that they’re doing in the community to create safe spaces for youth. So the chair is traveling around the country, we started off in Detroit, went to DC, it’s now in Atlanta, then we’ll be going to LA and back here to Wisconsin. And we’re talking with change makers, activists, artists, designers about what their safe place is but then also talking about some of the challenges that they faced in their careers when it comes to racism.
And also just what’s happening in the world today. Now that everybody has seen or observing what’s happening. So it’s some interesting discussions and discussions are really that, you know, this has been happening for decades, but now people are finally taking notice and we want to move beyond the conversations, to have people take a stand. So it’s interesting to use a chair as a way to inspire people to take a stand. So there’s my word play right there. It’s only one chair, it’s not a line of chairs, so it’s one chair that people can go to Design by Mike Ford or Design at Mike Ford and they can make a contribution to the Hip-Hop Architecture Camp and Boys & Girls Club. Go to the site, you see a donate option. And there’s different tiers of donating to support the campaign. But if you want an opportunity to own the chair, we’re encouraging people to make a donation of $1,000 and then also state why it is important to take a stand. And at the end of this month we’ll be going through those statements for people that donated that amount and someone will become the owner of this chair.
AD: I love this and I just want to let the listeners know, if they missed any of these conversations that you’ve already hosted, they can find them on IGTV on your Instagram channel, right? Which is the Hip-Hop Architect?
MF: Yes, you can find the conversations there; Herman Miller also has them on their IGTV as well. Yeah, it’s been interesting conversations with a variety of people. Our last one we just had was with Dr Dré and Dr Dré was on the show Yo MTV Raps that was responsible for broadcasting hip-hop across the globe, making it so it wasn’t just this New York/LA thing. But really bringing hip-hop to everybody. Talked with one of the set designers for the Trap Museum in Atlanta, it was another interesting conversation just talking about what it means to tell the story of trap music in the history of Atlanta and their contribution to the culture.
We also talked with, back home in Detroit, Tommey Walker, he created Detroit Vs. Everybody. And also has a movement called Everybody Vs. Injustice. And last, one of the most interesting conversations, and I say that because we had a similar experience of painting the mural for a city, an artist named Sheefy McFly, this dude is amazing [laughs] in Detroit. Yeah, he got commissioned to paint a mural or a number of murals for the City of Detroit, but while painting one of the murals, one of the first ones, he was arrested by police.
It wasn’t just one car, he said it was seven cars that showed up to arrest him for painting a mural, totally disregarded the fact that he had a permit in his book bag, he wanted to reach for it, there was a scuffle. What are you going for? It’s like; I’m showing you my permit. They didn’t want to see that. But it became national news and and luckily he survived the encounter, but his career blossomed after that injustice. So having those conversations with creatives about the injustices that they faced, even when they’re in an assumed safe space.
AD: Yeah.
MF: So that’s what these Conversations for Change are all about and Herman Miller has an entire roll out of diversity and inclusion initiatives and this is just one of the many things that they’re doing in and around the design profession to spark change.
AD: Well, I’m glad to hear it and you know, much change is needed and attention to the injustice is one thing, but taking a stand is the next. I’m grateful that you’re sharing the story with us and that we can participate and also contribute. So we’ll share all of those links on the show notes for sure. Before I let you go, I know I’ve kept you for a long time, I do want to learn about the Universal Hip-Hop Museum in the Bronx because that’s a project that you’re leading the design of and that sounds pretty important and also right up your alley. Can you tell us about that?
MF: Yeah, so the Universal Hip-Hop Museum is a project I’ve been working on for at least, about six years. So I was brought on by Kurtis Blow and the executive director of the Universal Hip-Hop Museum, Rocky Bucano, when they heard of this guy calling himself the Hip-Hop Architect. So one of the board members is like, small world, one of the board members was here at the University of Wisconsin, at the time he ran a hip-hop program at UW and he was in a meeting, right now, at that moment they were simply trying to find a space, having a number of [programmatic?] discussions and now they’re looking for a space for the home for the museum.
And had no renders, no floor plan, like no collateral at all and he’s like, hey, I know this guy, he calls himself the Hip-Hop Architect, he’s in Madison, Kurtis Blow you should meet him. And the rest was history. We have a call with the executive leadership for the museum and then at that time I was brought on and they’re like, hey, can we get a rendering of what the museum could look like, we’re going to use it for our capital campaign. There’s no way I’m going to make an image for the museum by myself.
So I created the series of design ciphers and we brought rappers and designers and architects to a session and I was there in the Bronx, it was at the Bronx County Courthouse that’s been shuttered for a number of years, but we activated this abandoned building in the middle of the Bronx and we stayed there for about three/four days and we had a charrette about what the museum, how it should look. Netflix came in at the end of that charrette and they did a special screening of The Get Down, this docu series that came out about the formation of hip-hop in the Bronx.
So it was you’re right up my alley, I was excited to do it. I brought in Dr Craig Wilkins to be a part of the discussions and we were sitting there elbow-to-elbow with not just hip-hop artists but people who were there at the beginning, who were responsible for the creation of the culture. So we had the DJ who invented scratching, Kurtis Blow, a number of other pivotal people, Roxanne Shanté and you have these young designers and architects asking questions in the session.
So that was my first involvement with them and then from there I teamed with the museum and Microsoft and we did a national series of design ciphers, moving around to the different hubs of hip-hop. Went to LA, went to Atlanta, went to Detroit and had a similar session with artists and residents there about what the museum should be. So fast forward to today, we’ve looked at multiple sites around the Bronx.
They were committed to be in the Bronx, they didn’t want to have a similar story to the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame, which ended up in Cleveland. You know, nothing against the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame, they are advisors to the Hip-Hop Museum, but the Hip-Hop Museum was committed to being in a place that birthed the culture.
So fast forward to today, multiple sites, multiple peaks and valleys along this story, multiple artists have been involved. The project landed as part of a mixed use development that is breaking ground. The date has moved a number of times because of Covid-19, but the development is breaking ground. It’s mixed use development with low income housing, the University Hip-Hop Museum is the cultural anchor on the first two floors. There are other programmatic elements like the Bronx Children’s Museum and again, a number of places or spaces within this mixed use development.
Yeah, it’s an exciting project and they are still in the fundraising phase of that project. It’s tremendously helpful to be a part of this mixed use development that construction can start as the museum continues to raise funds, to build out their space.
AD: So exciting. And I’m really looking forward to when it becomes a project, a reality that we can all go visit, but in the meantime, I’m glad you’re spearheading this because it seems like it would be a travesty for anybody else to be running this project.
MF: It’s been an interesting journey. And right now I’ve joined the museum as the director of design, at the Universal Hip-Hop Museum, something they wanted to cement and make an even more direct tangible link between myself and the Universal Hip-Hop Museum.
AD: So, we’ve learned a lot about your career and your motivation and the deep analysis of hip-hop and hip-hop culture, but you know, you do a lot of interviews and I sometimes wonder if, I don’t know, if there’s something that not everybody asks or something that you feel like it’s important to say and I just want to open up this platform and give you that space to say anything you want to say?
MF: Yeah, thanks for asking that question. One of the most important things that I would want people to understand and also use as a catalyst to take action is that is that the Hip-Hop Architecture Camp, it always seems as if it’s this heavily funded program. You know, we run a camp in over 30 cities, we’ve done these international programs, there’s hip-hop artists who are always showing up, popping up at our events. And there’s this misconception that we have this hefty budget.
But that’s not the case. Growing up in Highland Park and in Detroit, I know how to make something out of nothing. I know how to stretch resources and I also build friendships and connections with individuals who can come and support the programming. People have seen us on the Oprah Winfrey Network or the Today Show, oh, there’s on the Rolling Stone magazine. People will be shocked to learn how much funding we have when we’re putting on these events, which again, are free.
So a message that I’d like to share is, there have been and will continue to be a number of programs out there that introduce architecture, design and/or urban planning to youth and I encourage people to look at the programs that they have been funding for years. Look at those programs that have received the six and seven figures and question the impact. We still have a very low number of diverse design professionals and what would happen if some of that money went to some of these grass roots organizations.
I joke and say we can’t mess up any more than some of these institutions and programs that people have those six and seven figure budgets. But it’s time to take an opportunity to fund organizations that are bringing young people in and not having to check their culture at the door, but recognizing the creativity that has influenced the world, is the most consumed culture in the world. How can we allow that culture to permeate architecture and yeah, so I encourage people to not just share videos or likes, which are all great, but money matters.
And it’s not just the Hip-Hop Architecture Camp, there’s programs like Iloma’s project, Pipeline, there are other programs out there that will benefit from additional funding. And the Hip-Hop Architecture Camp is one; we just make stretching a dollar look very good.
AD: Yes, you do, but to make a donation..
MF: Yeah, the best way, yeah, you can go to www.hiphoparchitecture.com and there’s a ‘donate’ option there. It’s 501(c)(3), so the donations are tax deductible through our 501(c)(3) partner. So www.hiphoparchitecture.com, click to ‘donate’ and whatever you give is beneficial to the program.
AD: Well, thank you for sharing that. And I truly hope that some of our listeners will consider making a donation because I really think what you’re doing is incredibly valuable, not just to architecture and design communities, but to society, that’s my endorsement. Now, I have one final question. So I watched your TEDx Talk and I encourage all of our listeners to go to YouTube and watch your TEDx Talk as well, it’s fascinating.
And in that talk you described hip-hop as ‘modernisms post-occupancy report.’ You say that it defines the structures and planning that made the hood what it is. And you advocate, obviously, for constituents of hip-hop culture to have voice, access and agency in building the spaces and places that remedy the injustices faced by people of color at the hands of modernism. So, Hip-Hop Architecture Camp is creating and growing this army of designers, fast forward several years to the next music movement, incubated in the architecture created by this generation of hip-hop architects, what do you think it sounds like?
MF: Good question. What does the architecture of the future that’s designed by this army of hip-hop architecture, that’s designed by this army of hip-hop architects, how does it look and how does the music sound? That’s a good question. The way that it looks doesn’t matter as much as the impact that it has on people who inhabit the space. So I don’t see hip-hop architecture as this whimsical expression -
Although it could be. But it’s not so much an aesthetic approach; it’s an approach that brings justice to the people who use the spaces. The way that we achieve that aesthetic, you know, I think is derived from the ways that some of the elements were created in practice. So looking at ways that, again, music or lyrics are structured, the patterns within the music. How do those structures and patterns now turn into architectural structures and patterns? But more specifically, the patterns that are talking about justice, that are talking about equality, so lyrically how do those structures and patterns turn into architectural structures and patterns that represent the same thing that the lyrics were talking about.
So those are explorations that we are doing, those are the projects that we are completing, such as the Samburu Girls Foundation project, annual scholarship giveaway, we’re exploring those options and trying to make the next era of Black architects and designers heavily equipped with the tools of their culture.
AD: Well, that is amazing. Thank you so much for sharing your life story and all the work that you’re doing. This has been a really incredible talk, thank you so much.
MF: All right, thank you for having me.
AD: Hey thanks for listening! To see images and read the show notes, click the link in the details of this episode on your podcast app, or go to Cleverpodcast.com where you can also sign up for our newsletter. Subscribe to Clever on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to rate and review, it would really help us out. We also love chatting with you on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, you can find us at Clever Podcast and you can find me at Amy Devers. Clever is produced by 2VDE Media with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Laura Jaramillo and Anouchka Stephan and music by El Ten Eleven. Clever is proudly distributed by Design Milk.
Michael Ford Headshot
What is your earliest memory?
Not necessarily my earliest memory but one of my favorite memories as a kid is playing basketball on a milk crate with my cousins. The milk crate was fastened to a shed at my grandmother's house.
We had some epic battles as little kids in that backyard. To us, that backyard was a stadium! People from all around the neighborhood came to play!
Michael as a child with his cousins
Michael Ford as a child
How do you feel about democratic design?
The democratization of design is a necessary step in realizing design justice as more people have access to design the space, places, and products they use!
What’s the best advice that you’ve ever gotten?
Be you. If you don't, who will?
How do you record your ideas?
Sketchbooks. Lot's of sketchbooks.
What’s your current favorite tool or material to work with?
Sound with an emphasis on the human voice.
Hip Hop Parkitecture - April 2017
A camper from The Hip Hop Architecture Camp
What book is on your nightstand? (alt: What’s the best book you’ve read this past year?)
The most precious book I own is on my nightstand, its a photo album of my son MJ3. His heart stopped beating just before he was born. It's a constant reminder of how precious life is.
Why is authenticity in design important?
Authenticity in design is important because it highlights the need for justify, equity and diversity, and inclusion in design. To be authentic in design professions, we must allow space for those underrepresented communities to create!
The Hip Hop Architecture Camp in Kenya
Michael Ford and Dr.Josephine Kulea, Founder of the Samburu Girls Foundation
Partnership with Zero Mass Water to give an all girls school in Kenya access to drinking water
Favorite restaurant in your city?
It's not a restaurant, but they do have some of the best chocolate in the world, CocoVaa Chocolatier.
What might we find on your desk right now?
Baby toys, a MPK Machine, and all those sketchbooks I mentioned earlier.
Who do you look up to and why?
Paul R. Williams, The Hollywood Architect. He's the greatest architect to ever do it and he did it at a time when people said he couldn't do it.
What’s your favorite project that you’ve done and why?
My favorite project is The Hip Hop Architecture Camp! My legacy is beyond bricks and mortar, it's measured by the impact I have on people's lives. Through The Hip Hop Architecture Camp with the support of my partners, I provide academic scholarships to students studying design professions, provided access to clean water for over 400 girls in Kenya, and to date have introduced over 1500 Black and Brown youth to architecture and design for FREE!
What are the last five songs you listened to?
Shining Star by Earth Wind and Fire, The Girl from Ipanema, Let The Rhythm Hit 'Em by Eric B. & Rakim, Ultra Black by Nas, and Bury Me in Gold by Big Krit.
Where can our listeners find you on the web and on social media?
Instagram @TheHipHopArchitect
Twitter @HipHopArch
Website: www.hiphoparchitecture.com
Herman Miller X Michael Ford: “Conversations for Change”
“Conversations for Change” chair designed in partnership with Herman Miller
Clever is produced and hosted by Amy Devers with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan, and music by El Ten Eleven.
Clever is hosted & produced by Amy Devers. Thanks to Rich Stroffolino for editing this episode.
Production assistance from Laura Jaramillo and music by El Ten Eleven—hear more on Bandcamp.
Shoutout to Jenny Rask for designing the Clever logo.
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