Jamaican-born architect, researcher, educator, and curator Sekou Cooke is named a W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute Fellow. The fellowship is part of the W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. 

"The W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute Fellowship program invites scholars, artists, public intellectuals, and activists across the humanities and social sciences to pursue independent projects encompassing Africa and its diasporas. Fellows arrive from the U.S., Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Europe to be in residence at the Hutchins Center for either a full academic year or one semester."  

The Hutchins Center for African & African American Research shares Cooke will be "in residence as a Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellow for the 2021-2022 academic year," where he will work on his project 3D Turntables Remix: The Architectural Technology of Hip-Hop. 

Cooke joins a cohort of fifteen other research fellows.

His project "We Outchea: Hip-Hop Fabrications and Public Space" is a part of the recent MoMA exhibition "Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America." His project outlines public housing and his goals for transforming a site in Syracuse. In March, Cooke was named the new director of the Master of Urban Design program at UNC Charlotte School of Architecture. Before joining the UNC faculty this August, Cooke is currently an assistant professor in the School of Architecture at Syracuse University. This past April, Cooke's 2021 monograph Hip-Hop Architecture was published. 

Archinect spoke with Cooke in September 2018 to learn more about his work and the growth of Hip-Hop Architecture. Listen to episode 120 of Archinect Sessions below.