Building Blocks by Building Beats

By Lindsay Nieman

On a hot day in August, a group of kids sat shoulder-to-shoulder in a stairwell at Chicago's Robert Morris University. Some were furtively reading over notebook pages, their mouths moving silently. Others were practicing dance moves. One stood on the landing, ready to launch into the rap verse she'd composed.

As a backing track kicked on, action was called, and together, the group chanted, "Build the hood up, put the guns down. I'm talking right now. I'm talking right now."

This was a rap battle — or the culmination of Chicago's 2018 Hip Hop Architecture Camp, a free-of-charge, five-day national camp dedicated to introducing middle and high school students to architecture, urban planning, creative placemaking, and economic development.

According to architect Michael Ford, who founded and runs the project, hip hop can provide a unique entry point into urban design, especially for communities of color that have suffered from a lack of investment, racist land-use policies, and displacement.

"If you look at hip-hop — the lyrics, the aesthetics — it tells us what happened in our communities. It gives an unfiltered history of bad urban planning and bad architecture," Ford says in the above video. "So Hip Hop Architecture is a way to not only get kids involved, but to make architecture aware of the injustices that have been placed on communities of color through what many may consider to be good design — or good intent in design — but had a very bad effect on our community."

The camp questions those design principles by teaching attendees how to look closely at the cities around them — and how to listen closely to the songs recorded about them. In Chicago, the camp toured the urban landscape by boat down the Chicago River, then returned to the classroom to analyze lyrics by local artists like Lupe Fiasco and Kanye West. Compound words and rhyme schemes were translated into Lego city blocks, then remixed with amenities and public spaces added in by the students.

"We're putting stuff next to each other that makes sense," one attendee said, pointing to Lego configurations that sited a homeless shelter next to a job center, and then a hospital next to a retirement home. "There's a park in front so they can go outside and leave their rooms," she said.

The students also received a crash course in three-dimensional digital design with program sponsor Autodesk, then discussed challenges in their own communities with local architects, planners, activists, and hip-hop artists. Those conversations would inspire the lyrics they'd write and record for their music video on the last day of camp.

Ford asks for verses about solutions; in Chicago's case, the song centered on the ways community engagement and urban design can address gun violence and segregation. The finished product was added to The Hip Hop Architecture Camp Mixtape, which currently has more than 10 tracks from a variety of cities, with themes ranging from gentrification to homelessness.

"Chicago has a long-standing history of incorporating racialized policies that has led to a highly segregated city and many underinvested neighborhoods where people of color live," said Ayrika Craig, a community outreach coordinator from the Chicago Architecture Center who was on hand during the camp. "To create cities that work for everyone, we need to address the barriers for youth that are interested in these professions. This work starts by understanding what tools we need to use to engage with those who are historically underrepresented within the architecture and urban planning fields."

The camp, Ford says, is one of those tools. His approach has two main goals: to get more people of color involved in urban design, and to "retell the history of architecture and urban planning as it relates to black communities."

"It allows youth — who will be the future, who are our future — to define the spaces that they want to see 20 years from now," he says.

Lindsay Nieman is an associate editor of Planning magazine.