Since the 1990s, artists, academics, and architects have played with the idea of hip-hop driven architecture. Arresting visual art, like Amanda Williams’s “This Is My Nursery School,” which depicts rap lyrics scrawled over parking lots, billboards, and urban detritus, is part of a global design movement that is both mature yet evolving.
Locally, UC assistant professor Stephen Slaughter, who grew up immersed in hip-hop culture, hosts hip-hop and urbanism workshops at Elementz in OTR.
“Hip-hop is architectural,” says Slaughter. “It comes out of a practice of space, of spatial and economic practice, and of people’s response to that.”
To read more about the movement, visit Metropolis.
Enjoy this story?
Sign up for free solutions-based reporting in your inbox each week.