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Architectural Digest

Hip Hop Architecture Camp Lands in DC

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by Deane

For Architectural Digest, I had the wonderful opportunity to attend a day of the Hip Hop Architecture Camp’s visit to Washington, DC. This edition of the camp brought 10 middle school students to AIA|DC’s District Architecture Center, where, with guidance from the camp’s founder, Michael Ford, they explored architectural concepts through physical and digital modeling. The students also developed verses reflecting their experiences in the built environment, with a rap battle yielding four finalists who then recorded a DC-specific track. An excerpt of that article is below.

Michael Ford speaks to his Hip Hop Architecture Camp participants

How Hip-Hop Can Help Solve Design’s Diversity Problem

The Hip Hop Architecture Camp is introducing underrepresented kids to the design profession, one lyric at a time.

by Deane Madsen

On a mild afternoon in Washington, D.C., a makeshift stage has formed in the entryway of the District Architecture Center. Middle-schooler Iyana Benjamin adjusts the arms of her gold-rimmed, circular glasses from beneath a gray beanie and smiles as she looks up from her notebook and out to a few rows of folding chairs, accommodating nine other kids and a few adults. A beat emanating from a nearby laptop breaks the silence, and Benjamin begins to rap. She raps in a matter-of-fact yet firm tone on topics that are well beyond her years, from the swift gentrification of her neighborhood to the overshadowed African American architects who first built it.

I grew up in a place being gentrified / Raised in Chocolate City, rehabilitized / Hanging out in the streets of Eastland Gardens / Where houses were built by Lewis K and Clyde Martin

—Iyana Benjamin

Benjamin, along with the other middle school students, are part of a weeklong workshop called the Hip Hop Architecture Camp. The program, founded and administered by architectural designer Michael Ford, brings awareness of the built environment to kids who may never have considered their place of upbringing as being a formative part of it. That’s something Ford hopes to change.

For students at the camp, the workshops are opportunities to not just explore a potential career avenue but develop a whole new way of thinking about their cities. Over the course of a week, students watch a lot of hip-hop music videos, but they also reinterpret their lyrics as miniature buildings and explore design at multiple scales. With the aid of volunteers, they then write their own songs (the lyrics of which are featured throughout this piece), jotting down bars in notebooks with a goal of recording them later.

“The benefit of doing this, for architects and urban planners, is being able to communicate with other artists about their skills and bring them into architecture,” Ford says. “As architects, we’ve always been influenced by culture. The Hip Hop Architecture Camp creates some very interesting, cross-disciplinary conversations that I have not had in architecture school.”

Read the full article at Architectural Digest.

Listen to the DC track, “Find A Way,” via the Hip Hop Architecture Camp.

Iyana Benjamin records her verse in a Fort Washington, Md., studio

AIA|DC Tackles Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

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by Deane

At a panel discussion hosted by AIA|DC, Kimberly Dowdell, the president of NOMA, and William Bates, the president of the AIA, discussed their respective efforts at improving diversity and equity within the profession. It was my honor to attend and to cover the evening for Architectural Digest; an excerpt of that coverage is below.

Dr. Michelle Joan Wilkinson (left) moderates a panel discussion with
Kimberly Dowdell and William Bates.

5 Takeaways from the AIA’s Latest Discussion of Its Diversity Problem

Architects discussed the crucial steps toward building a more equitable profession, at a panel in Washington, D.C.

By Deane Madsen

It’s no secret that the architectural profession has a diversity problem. Of the AIA’s 94,000 members, just 2,270 are African American, and of those, 452 are women, according to data from the Directory of African American Architects. And, for now at least, the future doesn’t seem to be looking much brighter: Only five percent of students enrolled in architecture programs are African American, according to demographic data compiled by the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards.

Last night, a group of architects, advocates, and curators assembled at the Washington, D.C., chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) to unpack and address some of these concerns. At an evening event titled “Embracing Our Differences, Changing the World,” AIA President William Bates and National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) President Kimberly Dowdell discussed equity, diversity, and inclusion with Michelle Joan Wilkinson, a curator of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, before a packed house. “It’s not a secret that architecture as a profession has fallen behind,” Bates conceded, adding that the percentage of black students in architecture programs is “not that different from what it was 50 years ago.”

Seizing upon guidelines for diversity and inclusion that the AIA released earlier this year, the speakers reflected upon the urgent need for more equitable representation in the profession.

Read the five takeaways in the full article at Architectural Digest