sekou cooke STUDIO

sekou cooke STUDIO is an architecture and urban design practice founded in 2008. In its own words, the studio is “centered on the exploration of Hip-Hop Architecture, an approach to contemporary design that embraces hip-hop culture and applies its shape, structure, and ideologies to the built environment.” The studio’s work includes public, nonprofit, and residential projects, as well as temporary installations and speculative designs.

Projects include:

• Grids + Griots, a community pavilion commissioned for the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial;
• The Syracuse Hip-Hop Headquarters (SHHHQ), a radical redevelopment of a 40,000 square foot former dairy building in the city’s Near Westside;
• Hip-Hop Architecture, an expansive monograph outlining the history and development of hip-hop architecture.

Sekou Cooke holds a BArch from Cornell University and an MArch from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. He is the director of the Master of Urban Design program at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the 2021/2022 Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University, and a founding member of the Black Reconstruction Collective.

sekou cooke STUDIO has received multiple awards and recognitions, including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Graham Foundation, as well as an honorable mention in the faculty design category from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. The studio was selected as a contributor to the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial.

More information

• Reconstructions Portrait: Sekou Cooke on Hip-Hop Architecture and Reconstruction, PIN-UP
• Q+A: Sekou Cooke and the Era of Hip-Hop Architecture, Architect Magazine
• Q&A: The Blueprint for Hip-Hop Architecture, Metropolis