Though Sekou Cooke did not invent the term or the theory of hip-hop architecture, he is one of its leading proponents and practitioners. An architect, urban designer, researcher and curator born and raised in Jamaica and educated at Cornell and Harvard, he currently serves as the Director of the Master of Urban Design at UNC Charlotte. He also owns and operates Sekou Cooke STUDIO, which recently earned a 2022 Emerging Voices award from the Architectural League of New York.

Sekou’s recent projects include “Grids + Griots,” an architectural intervention commissioned for the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial, and the soon-to-be-built Syracuse Hip-Hop Headquarters that will convert a derelict building in the city’s Near Westside into event and performance venues and a variety of education and office spaces. Two of his designs are also now included on the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety’s list of Approved Standard Plans for Additional Dwelling Units.

In 2021, Bloomsbury published Sekou’s “Hip-Hop Architecture,” a monograph that, true to its title and inspiration, is a manifesto and exploration constructed more like a music album combined with expansive liner notes than a traditional academic tome, with its foreword written by noted sociologist and author Michael Eric Dyson.

In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Sekou draws a line between the fluid and inherently anti-authoritarian nature of hip-hop culture and the kind of equitable and fully participatory built environments hip-hop architecture envisions.

https://www.sekoucooke.com/

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/hiphop-architecture-9781350116146/

https://www.archdaily.com/435952/keep-talking-kanye-an-architect-s-defense-of-kanye-west