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Without the projects would we have hip-hop?

2016-08-25T12:44:00-04:00

Mike Ford, a lead architect for the Universal Hip Hop Museum, has studied and written about the relationship between disastrous urban planning/architecture and the rise of hip hop. Essentially, Ford's argument is that the ghettoization of African Americans in the 20th century via ill-conceived public housing projects created the conditions for the musical art form. As an article in VIBE puts it:

Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message”, Wutang Clan’s “S.O.S”, and Nas’s “Project Window” demonstrate the importance of understanding the role that these conditions created in influencing hip-hop. “Hip-hop lyrics are [filled] with first-hand accounts of living conditions in the projects,” Ford states. “The hip-hop MC used lyrics to create a dialogue, to give commentary and counterpoints to the modernist vision [that birthed towers like 1520 Sedgwick Ave]. The MCs served as a voice for disenfranchised communities and often un-consulted end users of public housing.”

The '80s strike back: Memphis and the rebirth of postmodernism

2016-04-18T13:13:00-04:00

postmodernism can be summed up in a single word: Memphis. Although architectural incarnations such as Graves’s Portland Building in Oregon and Philip Johnson’s Chippendale-topped AT&T Building (now the Sony Tower) in New York generated heated discussion, it was the spectacle of Memphis objects that catapulted postmodern design into the public eye. [...] postmodern designs, most often from Memphis affiliated names, are gaining market momentum

The cycle continues.

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Book Launch: "L.A. [TEN]: Interviews on Los Angeles Architecture 1970s-1990s" author in conversation with Aaron Betsky, Sylvia Lavin

2014-02-06T12:34:00-05:00

Last Tuesday's book launch for L.A. [TEN]: Interviews on Los Angeles Architecture 1970s-1990s at the A+D Museum brought author Stephen Phillips in conversation with the book’s publisher, Lars Müller, and architecture critics (among other things) Aaron Betsky and Sylvia Lavin. The book is a collaborative effort, culling work from students in Cal Poly’s L.A. Metro Program in Architecture and Urban Design, Wim de Wit and Christopher Alexander of the Getty Research Institute, and Phillips himself. As an initiative that pits students alongside practicing professionals, combining oral history with journalistic investigation, L.A. [TEN] is both the artifact of an educational performance and a signpost in the continuing attempt to historicize L.A.’s messy architectural identity.

Lavin and Betsky kicked off the launch with miniature lectures, riffing on L.A.’s environmental and cultural context during the book’s era. Lacking the institutional validation of a strong publishing culture, archite...