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HIP-HOP ARCHITECTURE: How Urban Renewal Unintentionally Birthed An Art Form By dan solomon 2 4 SXS W O R L D | N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 6 | SXSW.COM can fit into hip-hop in the same way that visual art or fashion do, as part of the idea that hip-hop is more than music—even as his work is certainly informed by the music.  "We can look at the MCs, and their lyrics, as counterpoints of architectural history and theory," he says. "We can look at the development, urban renewal or just blight-busting of different communities, and see how they encouraged, inspired or made MCs react."  Ford cites Grandmaster Flash and "The Message," and its cri- tique of modernism and the work of New York City urban planner Robert Moses, in its opening lines ("Broken glass everywhere / people pissin' on the stairs, you know they just don't care / I can't take the smell, can't take the noise / got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice") to offer a sharply contrasting view of the architecture of the Bronx projects that Moses pioneered.  Moses factors heavily into Ford's work, which makes sense given his inadvertent impact on the birth of hip-hop. If hip-hop is about making a dollar out of 15 cents, Moses is partly responsible for ensuring that the culture's founders didn't have two dimes, and when Ford talks about connecting the history and theory of archi- tecture to hip-hop, Moses is an obvious example of what he means.   hen Michael Ford first began composing the idea of hip-hop architecture 12 years ago as a graduate student at the University of Detroit Mercy, he had a hard time explaining to people exactly what it was. Now, after developing his research into a lecture tour, and attracting the attention of luminaries in both hip-hop and architecture, he knows how to drop knowledge about the ways that the two subjects can inform one another in a manner that gets heads nodding around the room.  "It was my thesis in school: 'What is hip-hop architecture?' I define it as a few different things. First, it's how we can use the hip-hop elements—DJ'ing, breaking, MC'ing, and graffiti—as a way to retell architectural history and theory through that lens of hip-hop," Ford says. "The second thing is to use it as a tool to increase the recruitment, retention and overall success of minor- ities in architecture. What I do is make architectural history, theory and practice more relevant to people in my communities by connecting some of those historical figures to hip-hop."  Bringing up the elements—as they've been known in hip-hop since the '70s—reflects a holistic approach to the music. There's long been a tension in hip-hop culture between the wider aspects and its most commercial forms. Ford's thesis is that architecture

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