In his TEDxMadison talk of March 2017, architect and educator Michael Ford, AIA, NOMA, presents hip-hop as modernism’s post-occupancy report. He says,
Hip-hop was born from modernism, it lived in modernism, and if anybody is going to give a post-occupancy report, it’s going to be hip-hop. Song after song is filled with counterpoints and commentary about modern architecture.
Hip-hop is the voice of the voiceless. It is the voice of the un-consulted end users of public housing and modernism, and if we can listen to the music, we can understand just how unsuccessful this architecture was, and we can understand the injustices that are faced by people of color who live in communities based on modernism.
View his talk here.
Photo courtesy MOD Media/ TEDx Madison.
From arcCA DIGEST Season 10, “Other Beauty.”
